Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Chlamydial zoonoses.

BACKGROUND Zoonoses were already a subject of intense interest even before the SARS and avian influenza epidemics arose. For many years, chlamydiae have been hypothesized to be important zoonotic pathogens, because of their wide distribution and their infectious cycle. This article provides an overview of the current state of knowledge on this subject. METHODS The authors present a selective review of the literature as well as their own findings. RESULTS The scientific knowledge of the distribution and infectious cycle of chlamydiae is still inadequate. The laboratory diagnosis of chlamydial zoonoses remains unsatisfactory in both human and veterinary medicine, as there are no commercially available sensitive and species-specific tests. Acute chlamydial infections are usually treated with macrolides, tetracyclines, or quinolones. Persistent varieties are not covered by standard therapy. CONCLUSIONS There is a considerable need for research on chlamydial infections, especially with regard to the diagnosis and treatment of persistent varieties.
Linkage relationships between organophosphate resistance and a highly active esterase-B in Culex quinquefaciatus from California.

A highly active esterase associated with resistance to temephos, chlorpyrifos, parathion, methyl parathion, malathion, and fenthion in the southern house mosquito from California is coded by a single gene with 2 alleles: Est-BA , coding a strongly staining esterase; and Est-BO , coding a weakly staining esterase. Est-BA was found to be dominant over Est-BO . Est-B gene is localized on the same chromosome as the gene coding resistance and there is a strong possibility that these 2 genes are identical since no recombinants were observed.
Stavudine Resistance: An Update on Susceptibility following Prolonged Therapy

The current report summarizes the available published and unpublished data from several investigators on resistance in clinical isolates following prolonged stavudine therapy. Results suggest that stavudine resistance is both modest in degree and infrequent in appearance. Phenotypic evaluation of 61 patients on stavudine therapy showed only modest changes in drug sensitivity following up to 29 months of treatment. The post-treatment isolates from 15 patients exhibited an increase in EC50 value >fourfold (level above variability of assay) when compared with the corresponding pretreatment isolates. However, the vast majority (11) of these pretreatment isolates either had unexpectedly low EC50 levels and/or had post-treatment isolates that lacked any amino acid changes within their reverse transcriptase (RT) gene to account for the observed change in sensitivity. Of the four remaining isolates, two appeared to have a multi-resistant phenotype to several nucleoside analogues and two had no detectable RT amino acid changes to account for the observed change in stavudine sensitivity. To date, clinical HIV-1 isolates displaying stavudine-specific resistance have yet to be reported. Furthermore, full or partial RT sequence analysis of 194 post-treatment isolates failed to identify any consistent amino acid changes. The strain-specific V75T mutation reported to confer stavudine resistance to the HXB2 HIV-1 strain in vitro, was found in only six isolates and did not correlate with stavudine resistance. This low incidence of stavudine resistance is in striking contrast to that observed with other nucleoside analogues and further supports the use of stavudine in first-line combination therapy for HIV patients.
Protecting Mobile Agent using Enhanced Reference Monitor based Security Framework

The introduction of mobile agent technology to distributed systems presents lots of benefits which include reduced network bandwidth consumption and network latencies, load balancing, etc. One critical issue with mobile agent technology is the security of its data and code against malicious hosts. The different security mechanisms proposed to offer protection seems to suffer some shortcomings that impact the performance of mobile agent’s execution. This paper presents an efficient security framework for the protection of mobile agents. Our proposed enhanced security framework deploys a trusted third party technique designed to allow the offloading of the computation-intensive verification mechanism for execution. This approach ensures that resource consumption by the verification mechanism of the reference monitor agent on the hosts is largely reduced, thus performing more efficiently than the existing system
Geoacoustic Velocity of Basement and Tertiary Successions of the Okgye and Bukpyeong Coast, East Sea

A geoacoustic modeling has been developed to predict sound transmission through the submarine layers of sediment and rock. It demands a geoacoustic model with the measured, extrapolated, and predicted values of geoacoustic parameters controlling acoustic propagation. In the coastal areas of Okgye and Bukpyeong, the East Sea, the marine succession consists of Quaternary/Tertiary deposits and acoustic basement. The basement of Okgye coastal area is indicative of siliciclastics of the Pyeongan Group in Paleozoic, and the average velocities of P-wave and S-wave are 4276 m/s and 2400 m/s, respectively. The basement of Bukpyeong coastal area is indicative of limestone of the Joseon Supergroup in early Paleozoic, and the average velocities of P-wave and S-wave are 5542 m/s and 2742 m/s, respectively.
Na,K-ATPase response to osmotic stress in primary dog lens epithelial cells.

PURPOSE Na,K-ATPase activity increases in lens cells exposed to hypertonic stress. To test whether the increase in activity involves stimulation of Na,K-ATPase expression, dog lens epithelial cells were subjected to hypertonic stress, and the time course of Na,K-ATPase protein and mRNA response was measured. METHODS Primary cultures of dog lens epithelial cells were maintained in isotonic or hypertonic media over the course of several days. Rubidium-86 uptake measurements, immunoreactive protein, and northern blot analysis were performed. RESULTS Dog lens epithelial cells exposed to hypertonic stress from culture medium supplemented with 150 mM NaCl or 250 mM cellobiose showed a twofold increase in Na,K-ATPase activity. The increase in activity was blocked by cycloheximide and was reversible when the cells were returned to isotonic medium. This activity was unaffected by the aldose reductase inhibitor, tolrestat. Na,K-ATPase protein and mRNA levels increased in cells exposed to medium containing 150 mM NaCl. Northern blot analysis showed that the alpha-1 and beta-1 mRNA levels increased as early as 6 hours and maximally increased 1.5-fold to twofold by 12 to 24 hours. CONCLUSIONS Elevation of Na,K-ATPase activity in dog lens epithelial cells exposed to hypertonic stress was associated with increased expression of Na,K-ATPase subunit mRNAs and was dependent on protein synthesis. These results suggest that upregulation of the enzyme activity is the result of an induction of Na,K-ATPase.
Constructing dynamic category hierarchies for novel visual category discovery

Category hierarchies are commonly used to compactly represent large numbers of categories and reduce the complexity of the classification problem. In this paper we introduce a novel and extended application of category hierarchies which is a powerful novel framework developed to construct dynamic category hierarchies and automatically discover novel visual categories. The dynamic is a characteristic of category hierarchies which can facilitate an important cognitive ability, the discovering of novel categories. We develop a constrained hierarchical latent Dirichlet allocation to build accurate category hierarchies. We employ object attributes as features to describe objects, which can transfer knowledge across categories and can efficiently describe novel categories. By combining them in the novel framework, novel visual object categories can be efficiently discovered and described. Extensive experiments based on PASCAL VOC 2008 and the LabelMe image database show the satisfactory performance of the proposed framework.
Chronic ingestion of dietary fat is a prerequisite for inhibition of feeding by enterostatin

Lin, Ling, and David A. York. Chronic ingestion of dietary fat is a prerequisite for inhibition of feeding by enterostatin. Am. J. Physiol. 275 (Regulatory Integrative Comp. Physiol. 44): R619–R623, 1998. —Enterostatin (Ent), the activation pentapeptide from procolipase, inhibits the intake of dietary fat. The selectivity of the response to fat suggests that the rat must recognize a permissive signal related to dietary fat for the Ent biological response. To investigate the nature of this signal, we studied the effects of Ent in rats that were adapted to either a high-fat (HF) or high-carbohydrate/low-fat (HC) diet and then naively exposed to either HF or HC diets. Ent (1 nmol) was injected into the lateral ventricle of overnight-fasted rats, and food intake was measured. Rats adapted to HF diet and tested with HC diet responded to Ent, but rats adapted to HC diet and tested with HF did not respond to Ent. The groups were maintained on their new test diets for up to 21 days and tested again for their response to Ent at 3, 7, 14, and 21 days. Ent response did not appear in HC-adapted rats switched to HF diet before 21 days. Conversely, the HF-adapted rats, which responded to Ent when tested with HC diet for the first time, did not respond at any subsequent testing time. The data suggest that chronic ingestion of dietary fat is required for Ent action and that chronic consumption of fat initiates a postingestion metabolic, endocrine, or neurochemical change that is required for the biological response to Ent.
Intersection Automata Based Model for Android Application Collusion

Android applications need to access and share user's sensitive data. To maintain user's privacy and related data security, it is essential to protect this data. Android security framework enforces permission protected model but it has been shown that applications can bypass this security model. Attacks based on such unauthorized privileges are known as Inter-Component Communication (ICC) Collusion Attacks. In this paper, we propose, a novel automaton framework that allows effective detection of intent based collusion. Our detection framework operates at the component-level. To evaluate our proposal, we developed 14 applications and took 4 applications from Google Play Store. We took all possible combinations from the set of 21 applications. We tested our approach on 210 pairs of applications derived from the set of 21 applications. Time and space complexity of our proposed approach is O(n) where n is the number of components in all the applications under analysis. The experimental results demonstrate that our technique is scalable to application sizing and more efficient as compared to other state of the art approaches.
Intestinal locomotion by means of mucoadhesive films

Colonoscopy is a standard medical procedure in which a long flexible endoscope is inserted into the rectum for inspection of the colon. Pushing the endoscope along the colon from behind can cause painful cramps to the patient, and entails the risk of perforation of the colonic wall. For this reason, a new intestine inspection device is being developed at TU Delft. The main challenge for the development of such a device is the locomotion mechanism along the colonic surface, which is highly deformable and covered with a layer of lubricative mucus. Successful intestinal locomotion can be achieved by manipulating the friction with the colonic surface. The paper describes a new biologically inspired method to manipulate friction along the colonic surface by means of mucoadhesive films. Mucoadhesives are polymers developed for controlled drug delivery, which can adhere to the mucus layer of the colonic surface. In vitro experiments showed that significantly high friction can be achieved by interposing mucoadhesive films between the intestine inspection device and the colonic wall. Moreover, the friction of the films appears to depend on their contact area with the colonic surface. It seems, therefore, feasible to switch between high and low friction values by altering the size of the contact area between the intestine inspection device and the colonic surface
Methods and geometry for plane-based self-calibration

We consider the problem of camera self-calibration from images of a planar object with unknown Euclidean structure. The general case of possibly varying focal length is addressed. This problem is nonlinear in general. One of our contributions is a nonlinear approach that makes abstraction of the (possibly varying) focal length, resulting in a computationally efficient algorithm. In addition, it does not require a good initial estimate of the focal length, unlike previous approaches. As for the initialization of other parameters, we propose a practical approach that simply requires taking one image in roughly fronto-parallel position. Closed-form solutions for various configurations of unknown intrinsic parameters are provided. Our methods are evaluated and compared to previous approaches using simulated and real images. Besides our practical contributions, we also provide a detailed geometrical interpretation of the principles underlying our approach.
Tool-based Development of Light-weight Fault-tolerant Embedded Systems

In this report, we present Gecko, a framework for the model-based development of embedded systems, focusing on light-weight fault-tolerance and dependability aspects. Given a high-level sketch of the system, including models of the hardware, software, expected faults, and a set of predefined mechanisms, Gecko can perform a series of refinement processes, including model annotation and concretization over specified mechanisms, to generate executable code over dedicated platforms. To supplement the design flow, several analysis techniques are embedded or experimented in Gecko as modules, including (a) generation of dependability models acceptable by verification engines, (b) worst-case transmission time calculation for networks demonstrated on the example of CAN bus, and (c) generation of integrity constraints using program analysis to estimate the effect of sensor imprecision. Gecko also interfaces standardized ESL design methodology by generating SystemC fragments (currently loosely timed TLM 2.0 models) to support detailed analysis.
Hematogones: a review and update

Our knowledge regarding the nature and function of ‘hematogones’ has evolved considerably, since the initial description more than 70 years ago. Once considered the ‘mystery cells’ of the bone marrow, major advances in immunology and flow cytometry have enabled us to better characterize these cells and recognize them as physiologic precursors of B-cells. In this review, we describe the morphologic and phenotypic characteristics and clinical relevance of hematogones, and report recent advances in our understanding and knowledge of these cells as they relate to physiologic and different pathologic conditions.
Learning to recognize faces from videos and weakly related information cues

Videos are often associated with additional information that could be valuable for interpretation of their content. This especially applies for the recognition of faces within video streams, where often cues such as transcripts and subtitles are available. However, this data is not completely reliable and might be ambiguously labeled. To overcome these limitations, we take advantage of semi-supervised (SSL) and multiple instance learning (MIL) and propose a new semi-supervised multiple instance learning (SSMIL) algorithm. Thus, during training we can weaken the prerequisite of knowing the label for each instance and can integrate unlabeled data, given only probabilistic information in form of priors. The benefits of the approach are demonstrated for face recognition in videos on a publicly available benchmark dataset. In fact, we show exploring new information sources can considerably improve the classification results.
The impact on Parkinson’s disease of electrical parameter settings in STN stimulation

Background The main advantage of deep brain stimulation (DBS) in the treatment of PD is that the electrical settings can be adjusted to optimize benefits and minimize adverse effects. The main objective of this study was to discover how varying these electrical parameters impacted on parkinsonian motor signs. Methods Twelve patients with PD with chronic bilateral subthalamic nucleus (STN) stimulation were selected. The authors evaluated the effects of a variation in the voltages, frequencies, and pulse widths on tremor, bradykinesia, and rigidity using two different paradigms: one in which the total electrical energy delivered was held constant, and one in which this was varied. Up to 26 parameter conditions were tested under double blind randomized conditions. Results Voltages ≥3 V and frequencies ≥130 Hz led to the greatest improvement in all three parkinsonian signs. A rate of 5 Hz significantly worsened akinesia. The combination of the highest voltage with the narrowest pulse width was most effective. Conclusions This study confirms that the most beneficial effects induced by STN stimulation are obtained at high frequencies and that voltage is the most critical factor to obtain adequate alteration in STN activity. The mechanisms by which STN DBS improves parkinsonism remain speculative.
Factors influencing bank financing quality of SMEs in clusters

This paper proposes a Box-Cox transformation on linear function based on foreign research and makes an empirical study on relationship between SMEspsila bank financing quality and SMEspsila vertical relation with bank as well as their inter-firm relationship in clusters, and in order to explore the results deeply, we hold focus discussion with sample companies. The empirical study indicates that hard information has significant influence on SMEs financing quality in clusters under the condition of neglecting other factors. However, with consideration of both hard information and soft information, soft information exerts significant positive effect on bank financing quality while the effect of hard information on financing quality has been reduced. Most importantly, network information also has significant effect on clusters SMEs financing quality.
University of Central Florida at TRECVID 2007 Semantic Video Classification and Automatic Search

In this paper, we describe our approaches and experiments in semantic video classiflcation (high-level features extraction) and fully automatic topic search tasks of TRECVID 2007. We designed a unifled high-level features extraction framework. Two types of discriminative low level features, Spatial Pyramid Edge/Color Histograms and Bag of Visterms, are extracted from the key-frames of the shots. Then the SVM classiflers with RBF kernel are used for classiflcation. The flnal classiflcation results are produced by fusing and combining these classiflers. The experiment results show that the combined classiflers substantially improved the performance over the individual feature based classifler. In fully automatic topic search task, we mostly focus on the video retrieval using the visual content through the high level features detectors. The main challenge in this task is mapping queries to the high level features. A novel earth mover’s distance (EMD) based relevance procedure that flnds the similarity between queries and videos through the high level features and semantic word similarity measures.
Maps of Open Chromatin Guide the Functional Follow-Up of Genome-Wide Association Signals: Application to Hematological Traits

Turning genetic discoveries identified in genome-wide association (GWA) studies into biological mechanisms is an important challenge in human genetics. Many GWA signals map outside exons, suggesting that the associated variants may lie within regulatory regions. We applied the formaldehyde-assisted isolation of regulatory elements (FAIRE) method in a megakaryocytic and an erythroblastoid cell line to map active regulatory elements at known loci associated with hematological quantitative traits, coronary artery disease, and myocardial infarction. We showed that the two cell types exhibit distinct patterns of open chromatin and that cell-specific open chromatin can guide the finding of functional variants. We identified an open chromatin region at chromosome 7q22.3 in megakaryocytes but not erythroblasts, which harbors the common non-coding sequence variant rs342293 known to be associated with platelet volume and function. Resequencing of this open chromatin region in 643 individuals provided strong evidence that rs342293 is the only putative causative variant in this region. We demonstrated that the C- and G-alleles differentially bind the transcription factor EVI1 affecting PIK3CG gene expression in platelets and macrophages. A protein–protein interaction network including up- and down-regulated genes in Pik3cg knockout mice indicated that PIK3CG is associated with gene pathways with an established role in platelet membrane biogenesis and thrombus formation. Thus, rs342293 is the functional common variant at this locus; to the best of our knowledge this is the first such variant to be elucidated among the known platelet quantitative trait loci (QTLs). Our data suggested a molecular mechanism by which a non-coding GWA index SNP modulates platelet phenotype.
Subtitle-Based Word Frequencies as the Best Estimate of Reading Behavior: The Case of Greek

Previous evidence has shown that word frequencies calculated from corpora based on film and television subtitles can readily account for reading performance, since the language used in subtitles greatly approximates everyday language. The present study examines this issue in a society with increased exposure to subtitle reading. We compiled SUBTLEX-GR, a subtitled-based corpus consisting of more than 27 million Modern Greek words, and tested to what extent subtitle-based frequency estimates and those taken from a written corpus of Modern Greek account for the lexical decision performance of young Greek adults who are exposed to subtitle reading on a daily basis. Results showed that SUBTLEX-GR frequency estimates effectively accounted for participants’ reading performance in two different visual word recognition experiments. More importantly, different analyses showed that frequencies estimated from a subtitle corpus explained the obtained results significantly better than traditional frequencies derived from written corpora.
Spectral triples for AF C*-algebras and metrics on the cantor set

An AF C -algebra has a natural filtration as an increasing se- quence of finite dimensional C -algebras. We show that it is possible to con- struct a Dirac operator which relates to this filtration in a natural way and which will induce a metric for the weak*-topology on the state space of the algebra. It turns out that for AF C -algebras, there is no limit to the growth of the eigenvalues of such a Dirac operator. We have obtained a kind of an in- verse to this result, by showing that a phenomenon like this can only occur for AF C -algebras. The results are then applied to a study of the classical Cantor set.