Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Associations between capsular serotype, multilocus sequence type, and macrolide resistance in Streptococcus agalactiae isolates from Japanese infants with invasive infections

SUMMARY Streptococcus agalactiae (group B streptococcus; GBS) isolates (n = 150) from infants with invasive infections between 2006 and 2011 were analysed for capsular serotype, multilocus sequence type, and antibiotic susceptibility. In cases with late-onset disease (n = 115), primary meningitis was predominant (62·6%), but represented only 39·1% in cases with early-onset disease (n = 23). The most common serotype was III (58·7%), followed by Ia (21·3%) and Ib (12·7%). Sequence types (STs) of serotype III strains included ST17 (50·0%), ST19 (26·1%), ST335 (18·2%), ST27 (4·5%), and ST1 (1·1%). Predominant STs of serotypes Ia and Ib were ST23 (81·3%) and ST10 (84·2%), respectively. No penicillin-resistant strains were detected, but 22·0% of strains had mef(A/E), erm(A), or erm(B) genes, which mediate macrolide resistance. A new ST335, possessing an mef(A/E) gene belonging to clonal complex 19 gradually increased in frequency. Improved prevention of invasive GBS infections in infants requires timely identification, and ultimately vaccine development.
Consensus statement on the benefit to the community of ESEMeD (European Study of the Epidemiology of Mental Disorders) survey data on depression and anxiety.

OBJECTIVE To provide an overview of the importance of the data generated by the European Study of the Epidemiology of Mental Disorders (ESEMeD), which found that prevalence and burden of mood and anxiety disorders were high and that care of individuals with mental disorders was suboptimal. Thus, ESEMeD data, based on 21,425 noninstitutionalized adults from Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Spain who underwent computer-assisted personal interviews, confirmed previous findings from epidemiologic studies performed in other locations. In addition, how this large and unique dataset may be utilized for maximum benefit to patients is outlined. PARTICIPANTS The co-chairmen David J. Nutt, M.D., Ph.D., and Ronald C. Kessler, Ph.D., invited 6 faculty members to participate: Jordi Alonso, M.D., Ph.D.; Alastair Benbow, M.B. , M.R. C.P.I. ; Yves Lecrubier, M.D.; Jean-Pierre Lépine, M.D.; David Mechanic, Ph.D.; and André Tylee, M.D. EVIDENCE The consensus statement is based on the 6 review articles published in this supplement, which include ESEMeD data and data from pertinent scientific literature. CONSENSUS PROCESS The faculty met over a 2-day period: day 1 included discussion of the review articles, during which the chairmen identified issues for further debate; day 2 included discussion of key issues to arrive at a consensus view. The consensus view was drafted by the chairmen and approved by all attendees. CONCLUSIONS ESEMeD provides a very important opportunity to improve knowledge on the epidemiology of mood and anxiety disorders. Despite a decade of educational initiatives, the diagnosis and treatment of mood and anxiety disorders remain suboptimal. Lack of awareness and stigma surrounding mental illness, variations in physicians' ability to diagnose and treat psychiatric conditions, and physician time pressures all contribute to the problem. Future education initiatives should include patients, primary care physicians, employers, and health policy influencers. Patients with mood and anxiety disorders may benefit from targeted antidepressant treatment, which should optimize the chance of patients' receiving appropriate therapy. In addition, depending on the patients' circumstances, psychotherapy, counseling, or social support may also be initiated.
A single centre, open‐label, cross‐over study of pharmacokinetics comparing topical zinc/clindamycin gel (Zindaclin®) and topical clindamycin lotion (Dalacin® T) in subjects with mild to moderate acne

Zinc/clindamycin gel (Zindaclin® 1%) gel, is a new once‐daily topical acne treatment (Strakan Ltd) containing clindamycin phosphate equivalent to 1% clindamycin and zinc acetate in a formulation, which leads to a reduced systemic absorption of clindamycin through the skin. The objective of the study was to compare the systemic absorption of clindamycin from zinc/clindamycin gel and clindamycin lotion (Dalacin® T topical lotion, Pharmacia Ltd) after repeated twice‐daily topical administration for two periods of 5 days with an intervening gap of 2 weeks in 24 subjects with mild to moderate acne. Plasma Cmax, and AUC0‐12 of clindamycin measured after single and multiple applications of zinc/clindamycin gel were between 30% and 50% lower than for clindamycin lotion. As zinc/clindamycin gel is a topical treatment for acne, the lower systemic bioavailability may be beneficial because there may be a correspondingly lower risk of systemic events in zinc/clindamycin gel‐treated subjects.
Solution Structure of the Orphan PABC Domain fromSaccharomyces cerevisiae Poly(A)-binding Protein*

We have determined the solution structure of the PABC domain from Saccharomyces cerevisiae Pab1p and mapped its peptide-binding site. PABC domains are peptide binding domains found in poly(A)-binding proteins (PABP) and are a subset of HECT-family E3 ubiquitin ligases (also known as hyperplastic discs proteins (HYDs)). In mammals, the PABC domain of PABP functions to recruit several different translation factors to the mRNA poly(A) tail. PABC domains are highly conserved, with high specificity for peptide sequences of roughly 12 residues with conserved alanine, phenylalanine, and proline residues at positions 7, 10, and 12. Compared with human PABP, the yeast PABC domain is missing the first α helix, contains two extra amino acids between helices 2 and 3, and has a strongly bent C-terminal helix. These give rise to unique peptide binding specificity wherein yeast PABC binds peptides from Paip2 and RF3 but not Paip1. Mapping of the peptide-binding site reveals that the bend in the C-terminal helix disrupts binding interactions with the N terminus of peptide ligands and leads to greatly reduced binding affinity for the peptides tested. No high affinity or natural binding partners from S. cerevisiae could be identified by sequence analysis of known PABC ligands. Comparison of the three known PABC structures shows that the features responsible for peptide binding are highly conserved and responsible for the distinct but overlapping binding specificities.
Multi-criteria Optimization Using the AMALGAM Software Package: Theory, Concepts, and MATLAB Implementation

The evolutionary algorithm AMALGAM implements the novel concept of adaptive multimethod search to ensure a fast, reliable and computationally ecient solution to multiobjective optimization problems. The method finds a well-distributed set of Pareto solutions within a single optimization run, and achieves an excellent performance compared to commonly used methods such as SPEA2, NSGA-II and MOEA/D. In this paper, I review the basic elements of AMALGAM, provide a pseudo-code of the algorithm, and introduce a MATLAB toolbox which provides scientists and engineers with an arsenal of options and utilities to solve multiobjective optimization problems involving (among others) multimodality, high-dimensionality, bounded parameter spaces, dynamic simulation models, and distributed multi-core computation. The AMALGAM toolbox supports parallel computing to permit inference of CPU-intensive system models, and provides convergence diagnostics and graphical output. Four dierent case studies are used to illustrate the main
Impact of Term Dependency and Class Imbalance on the Performance of Feature Ranking Methods

Feature ranking is widely employed to deal with high dimensionality in text classification. The main advantage of feature ranking methods is their low cost and simple algorithms. However, they suffer from some drawbacks which cause low performance compared to wrapper approach feature selection methods. In this paper, three major drawbacks of feature ranking methods are discussed. First, we show that feature ranking methods are highly problem dependent. For designing an effective feature ranking method and appropriate ranking threshold, we need background knowledge including the data set characteristics as well as the classifier to be used. Second, the feature ranking methods are univariate functions, while the nature of text classification is multivariate. It means that in these methods, correlation between terms is ignored. Finally, they fail in multiple class problems with unbalanced class distribution because they pay more attention to the simpler and larger classes. In this paper, these drawbacks, especially the last two issues, are experimentally investigated using a set of extensive numerical experiments with several data sets and feature scoring measures.
Synthesis and Calcium Mobilization Activity of cADPR Analogues Which Integrate Nucleobase, Northern and Southern Ribose Modifications

Novel cADPR mimics, which integrate nucleobase, northern and southern ribose modifications were synthesized. The key steps of the synthesis were a Cu(I)-catalyzed Hüisgen [3+2] cycloaddition and a microwave-assisted intramolecular pyrophosphorylation. Preliminary biological investigations showed that these cADPR mimics are membrane-permeating agonists of the calcium signaling pathway. The introduction of chlorine or fluorine at the 2'-position of the southern riboses led to a decrease of activity. The existence of a hydrophobic group on the 3'-OH of the southern riboses does not obviously alter the agonistic activity.
Fundamentals of Audio Class D Amplifier Design: A Review of Schemes and Architectures

Class D amplifiers [1]-[16], or switching amplifiers, are popular components in mixed-signal IC design and widely adopted for smartphones and tablets with rich multimedia, thanks to the high-efficiency and high-output power capability. Their applications range from audio and video drivers to envelope tracking for power amplifiers.
FORMIC DEHYDROGENASE AND THE HYDROGENLYASE ENZYME COMPLEX IN COLI-AEROGENES BACTERIA

Escherichia coli and many other coli-aerogenes bacteria characteristically contain a formic dehydrogenase which is active with methylene blue as the hydrogen acceptor. This activity is primarily associated with the insoluble particulate fraction of such cells (Stickland, 1929; Gale, 1939; Gest, 1952) and consequently has been difficult to characterize from an enzymatic standpoint. Intact cells and cell-free extracts of anaerobically grown normal strains also catalyze the decomposition of formate to molecular hydrogen and carbon dioxide by the so-called hydrogenlyase reaction. From studies of intact cells of normal and non-gas producing (anaerogenic) variants, Ordal and Halvorson (1939) provided some evidence in support of an earlier suggestion (Stephenson and Stickland, 1931) that the hydrogenlyase reaction was catalyzed by formic dehydrogenase and hydrogenase functioning together as a coupled electron transfer system. This concept was further supported by investigations on the hydrogenlyase reaction in cellfree systems from E. coli (Gest, 1952; Gest and Gibbs, 1952). The latter studies were recently amplified by investigation of the enzymatic constitution of six coli-aerogenes bacteria (anaerogenic variants) incapable of producing hydrogen from glucose (Gest and Peck, 1955). Cell-free extracts of one of the variants catalyzed the hydrogenlyase reaction and showed both formic dehydrogenase and hydrogenase activities; inability of this organism to produce hydrogen from glucose was consequently attributed to at least a partial block in the generation of formate from pyruvate via the phosphoroclastic reaction. Extracts from
Bayesian Compositional Hierarchies - A Probabilistic Structure for Scene Interpretation

In high-level vision, it is often useful to organize conceptual models in compositional hierarchies. For example, models of building facades (which are used here as examples) can be described in terms of constituent parts such as balconies or window arrays which in turn may be further decomposed. While compositional hierarchies are widely used in scene interpretation, it is not clear how to model and exploit probabilistic dependencies which may exist within and between aggregates. In this contribution I present Bayesian Aggregate Hierarchies as a means to capture probabilistic dependencies in a compositional hierarchy. The formalism integrates well with object-centered representations and extends Bayesian Networks by allowing arbitrary probabilistic dependencies within aggregates. To obtain efficient inference procedures, the aggregate structure must possess abstraction properties which ensure that internal aggregate properties are only affected in accordance with the hierarchical structure. Using examples from the building domain, it is shown that probabilistic aggregate information can thus be integrated into a logic-based scene interpretation system and provide a preference measure for interpretation steps.
Effect of Ginseng Saponins on Cold Tolerance in Young and Elderly Rats

Acute systemic injection of ginseng saponin (GS) significantly elevated both the total and maximum heat production in young rats (3-6 months) and improved their cold tolerance under severe cold (-10 degrees C under helium-oxygen). However, pretreating the animal with the optimal dose (10 mg/kg) of GS devoid of Rg1 and Rb1 failed to elicit any beneficial effect in improving the cold tolerance. Pretreating the animal with Rb1, but not Rg1, increased thermogenesis as well as cold tolerance in young rats. A similar beneficial effect in improving cold tolerance was also observed when old rats (26-28 months) were pretreated with the same doses of Rb1 (2.5 and 5.0 mg/kg). Our results indicate that Rb1 is the key ingredient in GS-mediated enhancement in thermogenic capacity and that both young and old rats can benefit from this treatment for enhanced cold tolerance.
Identification and Classification of Requirements from App User Reviews

Review function, as a feedback mechanism from users to developers and vendors, is provided by most APP distribution platforms that allow users to rate and comment an APP after using it. User reviews are recognized as a valuable source to improve APPs and increase the value for users. With the sharp increase in the amount of user reviews, how to effectively and efficiently analyze the user reviews and identify potential and critical user needs from them to improve the APPs becomes a challenge. In this paper, we propose an approach to automatically identify requirements information and further classify them into functional and non-functional requirements from user reviews, using a combination of information retrieval technique (TF-IDF) and NLP technique (regular expression) with human intervention in keywords selection for requirements identification and classification. We validated the proposed approach with the user reviews collected from a popular APP iBooks in English App Store, and further investigated the cost and return of our approach: how the size of sample reviews for keywords selection (cost) affects the classification results in precision, recall, and F-measure (return). The results show that when setting an appropriate size of sample reviews, our approach receives a relatively stable precision, recall, and F-measure of requirements classification, in particular for non-functional requirements, which is meaningful and practical for APP developers to elicit requirements from user reviews. Keywords-requirements identification; requirements classification; user review analysis
Honey Bees in the Tropics Show Winter Bee-Like Longevity in Response to Seasonal Dearth and Brood Reduction

Upon their first introduction to Americas in 1956, African honey bees (Apis mellifera scutellata) hybridized with the previously introduced and already established European honey bees (EHBs). The resulting Africanized honey bees (AHBs) have spread through the continental tropics of the Western Hemisphere. The expansion of AHB has been constrained in temperate climates generally thought to be because of a lack of key adaptations required for successful overwintering. A drastic increase in longevity during broodless periods is crucial to colony survival. In the temperate regions, honey bee colonies become broodless in winter. While tropical regions do not experience winters as temperate zones do, seasonal changes in the abundance of floral resources cause variation in brood levels throughout the year. Here we use an island population of AHB in Puerto Rico (gAHB) to test the capacity of tropical-adapted honey bees to alter their longevity in different seasons, as well as under brood manipulation. We found that worker longevity in the gAHB colonies increases in the wet season (maximum longevity ca. 88 days vs. 56 days) in response to dearth of floral resources. A more pronounced increase in longevity was observed in response to manipulative reduction of the amount of open brood (maximum longevity 154 days). In addition, long lived gAHB demonstrated the signature winter bee-like hypopharyngeal gland size (average acini diameter 100.8 ± 6.2 μm at 65 and 70 days of age, N = 26), intermediate between forager (88.7 ± 5.9 μm, N = 24) and nurse (129.5 ± 8.1 μm, N = 24) gland size. We showed that gAHBs do not lack the adaptation to alter their longevity seasonally, though the magnitude of changes is less intense than those observed in EHBs during temperate winters. This suggests that increased longevity in response to limited capacity to rear brood is a shared character of Africanized and European honey bees.
Reconstruction of ear canal in surgery for chronic ear.

Tympanoplastic procedures have now been practiced for more than 10 years, and most of the surgical methods are already well standardized. Excellent descriptions of different alternatives are given in textbooks on ear surgery by Shambaugh 1 and by Portmann, Portmann, and Claverie. 2 In evaluating the results, the Wullstein classification into 5 different types is generally used. The experience in our clinic with these procedures has been reported for 2 periods, 1950-1952 (Palva and siirala, 1954. 3 ) and 1953-1958 (Palva and Pulkkinen, 1960 4-5 ). During the first period, myringoplasty and columellization were the standard procedures. The cavum minor technique with a full thickness graft (fourth type) was not yet being attempted. If the Thiersch graft did not result in a viable membrane, a prosthetic covering of the round window was utilized. During the latter period, in the absence of the stapes, "sound shadowing" of the round window with full thickness
Robust estimation of spatially variable noise fields

Consideration of spatially variable noise fields is becoming increasingly necessary in MRI given recent innovations in artifact identification and statistically driven image processing. Fast imaging methods enable study of difficult anatomical targets and improve image quality but also increase the spatial variability in the noise field. Traditional analysis techniques have either assumed that the noise is constant across the field of view (or region of interest) or have relied on separate MRI acquisitions to measure the noise field. These methods are either inappropriate for many modern scanning protocols or are overly time‐consuming for already lengthy scanning sessions. We propose a new, general framework for estimating spatially variable noise fields from related, but independent MR scans that we call noise field equivalent scans. These heuristic analyses enable robust noise field estimation in the presence of artifacts. Generalization of noise estimators based on uniform regions, difference images, and maximum likelihood are presented and compared with the estimators derived from the proposed framework. Simulations of diffusion tensor imaging and T2‐relaxometry demonstrate a 10‐fold reduction in mean squared error in noise field estimation, and these improvements are shown to be robust to artifact contamination. In vivo studies show that spatially variable noise fields can be readily estimated with typical data acquired at 1.5T. Magn Reson Med, 2009. © 2009 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Multi-Modular Neural Network Architectures: Applications in Optical Character and Human Face Recognition

In practical applications, recognition accuracy is sometimes not the only criterion; capability to reject erroneous patterns might also be needed. We show that there is a trade-off between these two properties. An efficient solution to this trade-off is brought about by the use of different algorithms implemented in various modules, i.e. multi-modular architectures. We present a general mechanism for designing and training multi-modular architectures, integrating various neural networks into a unique pattern recognition system, which is globally trained. It is possible to realize, within the system, feature extraction and recognition in successive modules which are cooperatively trained. We discuss various rejection criteria for neural networks and multi-modular architectures. We then give two examples of such systems, study their rejection capabilities and show how to use them for segmentation. In handwritten optical character recognition, our system achieves performances at state-of-the-art level, but is eight times faster. In human face recognition, our system is intended to work in the real world.
Effects of one‐year hyposensitization in allergic rhinitis

In an open study, 21 patients suffering from chronic non‐seasonal rhinitis and allergic to house mites (HDM) have been treated for 1 year with either a new extract (Pharmalgen; n= 10) or an allergoid, pyridine denatured, extract (Alavac; n= 11), both precipitated with AlOH3, (depot). The following investigations were performed before and after therapy: clinical scoring (for 4 weeks), quantified skin prick tests (SPT) and nasal provocation tests (NPT) with HDM, and determination in serum of HDM‐specific IgE and IgG. Both groups were compared with six patients who remained untreated and underwent the same investigations. Hyposensitization with either extract induced an improvement in clinical scores (P < 0.05), a decrease in SPT reactivity (Pharmalgen: P < 0.001; Alavac: P < 0.01), a marked increase in the nasal tolerance to HDM (P < 0.001) and in HDM‐specific IgG (P < 0.001). In the group of untreated patients, all these parameters remained unchanged. Compared with the Alavac extract, the Pharmalgen extract was more active in decreasing SPT reactions (P < 0.05) and inducing a HDM‐specific IgG rise (P < 0.05). Although both extracts induced some untoward allergic reactions, no adrenaline was used at any time during the study. These data suggest that hyposensitization with depot extracts of HDM can be considered a safe and active adjunct to the treatment of allergic rhinitis.
A New Class of Dual Upper Bounds for Early Exercisable Derivatives Encompassing Both the Additive and Multiplicative Bounds

We present a new class of upper bounds for the Monte Carlo pricing of Bermudan derivatives. This class contains both the additive and multiplicative upper bounds as special cases. We also see that the hypothesis that the pay-off is positive for the multiplicative upper bound is unnecessary. The variance of these upper bounds is zero when the optimal hedge is chosen.