Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effect of Levels of Acetate on the Mevalonate Pathway of Borrelia burgdorferi

Borrelia burgdorferi, the agent of Lyme disease, is a spirochetal pathogen with limited metabolic capabilities that survives under highly disparate host-specific conditions. However, the borrelial genome encodes several proteins of the mevalonate pathway (MP) that utilizes acetyl-CoA as a substrate leading to intermediate metabolites critical for biogenesis of peptidoglycan and post-translational modifications of proteins. In this study, we analyzed the MP and contributions of acetate in modulation of adaptive responses in B. burgdorferi. Reverse-transcription PCR revealed that components of the MP are transcribed as individual open reading frames. Immunoblot analysis using monospecific sera confirmed synthesis of members of the MP in B. burgdorferi. The rate-limiting step of the MP is mediated by HMG-CoA reductase (HMGR) via conversion of HMG-CoA to mevalonate. Recombinant borrelial HMGR exhibited a Km value of 132 µM with a Vmax of 1.94 µmol NADPH oxidized minute−1 (mg protein)−1 and was inhibited by statins. Total protein lysates from two different infectious, clonal isolates of B. burgdorferi grown under conditions that mimicked fed-ticks (pH 6.8/37°C) exhibited increased levels of HMGR while other members of the MP were elevated under unfed-tick (pH 7.6/23°C) conditions. Increased extra-cellular acetate gave rise to elevated levels of MP proteins along with RpoS, CsrABb and their respective regulons responsible for mediating vertebrate host-specific adaptation. Both lactone and acid forms of two different statins inhibited growth of B. burgdorferi strain B31, while overexpression of HMGR was able to partially overcome that inhibition. In summary, these studies on MP and contributions of acetate to host-specific adaptation have helped identify potential metabolic targets that can be manipulated to reduce the incidence of Lyme disease.
Real-Time Monitoring of Video Quality in IP Networks

This paper investigates the problem of assessing the quality of video transmitted over IP networks. Our goal is to develop a methodology that is both reasonably accurate and simple enough to support the large-scale deployments that the increasing use of video over IP are likely to demand. For that purpose, we focus on developing an approach that is capable of mapping network statistics, e.g., packet losses, available from simple measurements, to the quality of video sequences reconstructed by receivers. A first step in that direction is a loss-distortion model that accounts for the impact of network losses on video quality, as a function of application-specific parameters such as video codec, loss recovery technique, coded bit rate, packetization, video characteristics, etc. The model, although accurate, is poorly suited to large-scale, on-line monitoring, because of its dependency on parameters that are difficult to estimate in real-time. As a result, we introduce a ldquorelative qualityrdquo metric (rPSNR) that bypasses this problem by measuring video quality against a quality benchmark that the network is expected to provide. The approach offers a lightweight video quality monitoring solution that is suitable for large-scale deployments. We assess its feasibility and accuracy through extensive simulations and experiments.
Probabilistically Safe Avoidance of Dynamic Obstacles with Uncertain Motion Patterns

This paper presents a real-time path planning algorithm which can guarantee probabilistic feasibility for autonomous robots subject to process noise and an uncertain environment, including dynamic obstacles with uncertain motion patterns. The key contribution of the work is the integration of a novel method for modeling dynamic obstacles with uncertain future trajectories. The method, denoted as RR-GP, uses a learned motion pattern model of the dynamic obstacles to make long-term predictions of their future paths. This is done by combining the flexibility of Gaussian processes (GP) with the efficiency of RRT-Reach, a sampling-based reachability computation method which ensures dynamic feasibility. This prediction model is then utilized within chance-constrained rapidly-exploring random trees (CC-RRT), which uses chance constraints to explicitly achieve probabilistic constraint satisfaction while maintaining the computational benefits of samplingbased algorithms. With RR-GP embedded in the CC-RRT framework, theoretical guarantees can be demonstrated for linear systems subject to Gaussian uncertainty, though the extension to nonlinear systems is also considered. Simulation results show that the resulting approach can be used in realtime to efficiently and accurately execute safe paths.
Stable nematic droplets with handles

We stabilize nematic droplets with handles against surface tension-driven instabilities, using a yield-stress material as outer fluid, and study the complex nematic textures and defect structures that result from the competition between topological constraints and the elasticity of the nematic liquid crystal. We uncover a surprisingly persistent twisted configuration of the nematic director inside the droplets when tangential anchoring is established at their boundaries, which we explain after considering the influence of saddle splay on the elastic free energy. For toroidal droplets, we find that the saddle-splay energy screens the twisting energy, resulting in a spontaneous breaking of mirror symmetry; the chiral twisted state persists for aspect ratios as large as ∼20. For droplets with additional handles, we observe in experiments and computer simulations that there are two additional −1 surface defects per handle; these are located in regions with local saddle geometry to minimize the nematic distortions and hence the corresponding elastic free energy.
Country, Sex, EDSS Change and Therapy Choice Independently Predict Treatment Discontinuation in Multiple Sclerosis and Clinically Isolated Syndrome

Objectives We conducted a prospective study, MSBASIS, to assess factors leading to first treatment discontinuation in patients with a clinically isolated syndrome (CIS) and early relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis (RRMS). Methods The MSBASIS Study, conducted by MSBase Study Group members, enrols patients seen from CIS onset, reporting baseline demographics, cerebral magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) features and Expanded Disability Status Scale (EDSS) scores. Follow-up visits report relapses, EDSS scores, and the start and end dates of MS-specific therapies. We performed a multivariable survival analysis to determine factors within this dataset that predict first treatment discontinuation. Results A total of 2314 CIS patients from 44 centres were followed for a median of 2.7 years, during which time 1247 commenced immunomodulatory drug (IMD) treatment. Ninety percent initiated IMD after a diagnosis of MS was confirmed, and 10% while still in CIS status. Over 40% of these patients stopped their first IMD during the observation period. Females were more likely to cease medication than males (HR 1.36, p = 0.003). Patients treated in Australia were twice as likely to cease their first IMD than patients treated in Spain (HR 1.98, p = 0.001). Increasing EDSS was associated with higher rate of IMD cessation (HR 1.21 per EDSS unit, p<0.001), and intramuscular interferon-β-1a (HR 1.38, p = 0.028) and subcutaneous interferon-β-1a (HR 1.45, p = 0.012) had higher rates of discontinuation than glatiramer acetate, although this varied widely in different countries. Onset cerebral MRI features, age, time to treatment initiation or relapse on treatment were not associated with IMD cessation. Conclusion In this multivariable survival analysis, female sex, country of residence, EDSS change and IMD choice independently predicted time to first IMD cessation.
Performance of a knotless four-strand flexor tendon repair with a unidirectional barbed suture device: a dynamic ex vivo comparison

With increased numbers of reports using barbed sutures for tendon repairs we felt the need to design a specific tendon repair method to draw the best utility from these materials. We split 30 sheep deep flexor tendons in two groups of 15 tendons. One group was repaired with a new four-strand barbed suture repair method without knot. The other group was repaired with a conventional four-strand cross-locked cruciate repair method (Adelaide repair) with knot. Dynamic testing (3–30 N for 250 cycles) and additional static pull to failure was performed to investigate gap formation and final failure forces. The barbed suture repair group showed higher resistance to gap formation throughout the test. Additionally final failure force was higher for the barbed suture group compared with the conventional repair group. When used appropriately, barbed suture materials could be beneficial to use in tendon surgery, especially with regard to early loading of the repair site and gap formation.
Training for Collaboration and Cognitive Alignment

This study extends the theory of Recognition Primed Decision-Making by applying it to groups. Furthermore, we explore implicit and explicit training. An experiment was conducted in which teams made resource allocation decisions while physically dispersed and supported with a shared virtual work surface (What You See Is What I See WYSIWIS). The task required teams to recognize patterns and collaborate to allocate their resources appropriately. The experiment explores the use of a cognitively aligned tool designed to minimize the cognitive effort required to for teams to recognize and share recognized patterns. Dependent measures included outcome quality, resource allocation time, and resource allocation ordering. All teams received significant financial rewards in direct proportion to their outcome quality. Teams supported with the “chunk” pattern-sharing tool had highest outcome quality.
E-waste business model, policies and regulations in India

E-waste business model evolves from recycling industry operating under policy and regulatory framework in a country. In India, environmental policy and regulatory framework is emerging from “pollution control” to “pollution prevention” with an increasing implementation of business model under public private partnership. In this context, an assessment of conventional E-waste recycling under the existing regulatory and emerging extended producer responsibility (EPR) regime with an option of public private partnership (PPP) as an interim intervention in the state of Maharashtra has been carried out. Further, mechanism of its establishment and operation both during short and long term have been identified for complete transition to EPR based regulatory regime.
An analysis of invariance in English stop consonants.

Speech researchers have been attempting to isolate acoustic invariance in the speech signal for the past several decades. Currently, however, no conception of invariance has proven adequate to the task of demonstrating the existence of invariant acoustic features in the six English stop consonants. In the present study, static and dynamic versions of two recent invariance proposals [Sawusch and Dutton (in press) and Forrest, Weismer, Milenkovic, and Dougall (1988)] were developed and tested on a corpus of 1392 naturally produced stop and stop consonant cluster tokens. Classification accuracies of the metrics using stepwise discriminant analyses showed performance to be significantly different from chance but lower than expected had the metrics isolated invariance in the signal. Results will be discussed in terms of general human auditory‐phonetic coding ability. Also, the notion that invariant acoustic features are the most useful way of conceptualizing the problem of phoneme recognition will be questione.
Perceived control, depressive symptomatology, and professional burnout: A review of the evidence

Abstract The term “burnout” refers to a syndrome of emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and reduced personal accomplishment that can occur in human service professionals. There are now over 2,000 publications on the topic. This paper reviews a subset of the literature concerned with burnout, depressive symptomatology, and perceptions of job control. It appears that the first two constructs share appreciable variance but are not isomorphic. Research also indicates that the development of burnout has a modest association with perceptions of job uncontrollability (i.e., perceived lack of autonomy and little decisional latitude). A conceptual model proposing that perceived uncontrollability induces depression indirectly. by operating through differences in the magnitude of burnout received only equivocal support in longitudinal studies. Prospective designs were proposed as a high priority for future burnout research. Other recommendations for future research included rests of a model that hypothesizes fr.
A dyadic study of “champions” in university‐industry relationships

Purpose – This dyadic study aims to analyses the influence of champions, particularly their personal engagement and experience, on relationships that cross different sectors and working environments.Design/methodology/approach – Based on an extensive literature review and initial qualitative research, a conceptual dyadic model is presented and tested using structural equation modelling methods.Findings – Path analysis results show a surprisingly weak effect of champions. However, personal experience influenced engagement, which, in turn, impacted on commitment. Furthermore, a positive influence of trust and commitment on satisfaction is confirmed.Research limitations/implications – The results are limited by the small dyadic sample size and a potential bias towards positive relationships.Originality/value – Based on relationship and services marketing theory, this paper provides much needed insights on university–industry relationships, analysing the influence of personal engagement and experience on the .
When is there a representer theorem? Vector versus matrix regularizers

We consider a general class of regularization methods which learn a vector of parameters on the basis of linear measurements. It is well known that if the regularizer is a nondecreasing function of the L2 norm, then the learned vector is a linear combination of the input data. This result, known as the representer theorem, lies at the basis of kernel-based methods in machine learning. In this paper, we prove the necessity of the above condition, in the case of differentiable regularizers. We further extend our analysis to regularization methods which learn a matrix, a problem which is motivated by the application to multi-task learning. In this context, we study a more general representer theorem, which holds for a larger class of regularizers. We provide a necessary and sufficient condition characterizing this class of matrix regularizers and we highlight some concrete examples of practical importance. Our analysis uses basic principles from matrix theory, especially the useful notion of matrix nondecreasing functions.
Dynamic front-end sharing in graphics processing units

A modern GPU processor consumes several times power of a multi-core CPU and delivers a much higher processing throughput. Researchers propose various architectural innovations to improve its energy efficiency. We observe that different streaming processors (SMs) in a GPU tend to exhibit very similar behavior for many GPU workloads. If multiple SMs can be grouped together and work in synchronous manner, it is possible to save energy by sharing the front-end in the SM pipeline including the instruction fetch, decode and schedule units. For efficient flow control and program correctness, the proposed architecture can identify unfavorable conditions and ungroup the SMs when necessary. However, sharing pipeline front-end between multiple SMs brings architectural challenges. In this paper, we show our design, implementation and evaluation for such an architecture. Detailed experiment results manifest 33.7% front-end and 6.8% total GPU energy reduction can be achieved.
Performance evaluation on H.26L-based motion compensation with segmented multiple reference frames

We propose a motion compensation (MC) scheme that outperforms the MC technique specified in the emerging ITU-T coding standard, H.26L. The proposed MC scheme is based on a motion boundary model that uses two different time/frame references for arbitrarily bisected regions within each macroblock. The motion boundary model increases MC efficiency especially for the incoherent moving regions caused by the intersection between foreground and background objects; the current H.26L's "motion boundary insensitive MC", on the other hand, allows only one reference frame for all segments within a macroblock to be predicted. Experiments show that the proposed MC scheme can reduce the bit rate by up to 5.9% compared to the current H.26L, without increase of decoding complexity.
Comparative Studies of Acculturative Stress 1

A series of studies of acculturative stress is reported, involving immigrants, refugees, Native peoples, sojourners and ethnic groups in Canada. Acculturative stress is defined as a reduction in health status (including psychological, somatic and social aspects) of individuals who are undergoing acculturation, and for which there is evidence that these health phenomena are related systematically to acculturation phenomena. A theoretical model and a comparative framework are presented within which the empirical studies were conducted. A total of 1,197 individuals were studied in the last decade and a half, using a common indicator of acculturative stress, for which reliability and validity indices are presented. Results indicate substantial variation in stress phenomena across types of acculturating groups, and across a number of individual difference variables (such as sex, age, education, attitudes and cognitive style), and across a number of social variables (such as contact, social support and status). A need for further comparative studies is identified so that acculturation phenomena may be understood in terms of their origins in variations across host societies, across acculturating groups and their interactions.
SOURCE CODE SCANNERS IN SOFTWARE QUALITY MANAGEMENT AND CONNECTIONS TO INTERNATIONAL STANDARDS

This paper deals with software quality by analyzing how source code scanners in quality management are connected to international product quality standards. The article has three parts: the authors (1) provide a short overview of software quality management, (2) examine to what extent can quality metrics of the static source code scanners PMD and FxCop be classified into the attribute sets of ISO/IEC 9126 and ISO/IEC 25010 quality models, (3) investigate the quality road from the code to the product via the ISO/IEC 25010 quality model. 1. Software quality management Software quality is one of the most important aspects of a software company. Computers are being used in an increasingly wide variety of application areas, their intended and correct operation is often critical for business success and/or human safety. IT companies perform various activities and follow various strategies to ensure the quality of their software systems.
Service supply chain management in e-government operations

This paper describes a case study looking at community care operations, as the first tier of a services supply chain in the government, provided by a private company. The research will focus on the application of internet technologies to enable a more effective use of the operational resources of the private care service provider. This paper also describes the benefits of using a web-enabled prototype in terms of achieving the transparency of information relating to care worker availability thus achieving a fast acceptance of the referred clients. A description of the redesigned business processes of the company to enable inclusive of working with the local authorities is also included here. This is essential to maximise value for money, improve competitiveness as well as client care quality. The core business operations supported by the solution are scheduling of care workers, automatic generation of care worker schedules, payment of care workers and the invoicing of the local authority process.
Another Look at the Burgess Hypothesis: Time as an Important Variable

The concentric circle theory of E. W. Burgess and some contradictory evidence derived from other cross-sectional analyses of the socioeconomic structure of cities is reexamined here with a longitudinal approach to assess the influence of time on the emergence of a pattern of socioecomonic status distribution within cities. The application of a Markov Chain to changes in the socieconomic chacteristics of tracts form 1940 to 1960 suggests a general evolutionary process. Although not evident in cross-sectional analysis, there is a trend toward a direct relationship between socioeconomic status and distance from city center even within cities which show an inverse cross-sectional relationship at present.
The Commodification of Information and Social Inequality

The commodification of information has contributed to the growth in social inequality over the last 30 years. An ideal type of an information commodity describes the features of a political, social, cultural, and legal apparatus that became institutionalized in the mid to late 1970s. This apparatus permitted the collection of rents, established a new mode of capital accumulation, and diminished the apparent importance of labor, especially abstract labor, in the making of exchange value. The proliferation of celebrity, conceptualized as excessively valorized labor, is also a consequence of the apparent change in the commodity form.
Involvement of the gonadal germinal epithelium during sex reversal and seasonal testicular cycling in the protogynous swamp eel, synbranchus marmoratus Bloch 1795 (teleostei, synbranchidae)

The swamp eel, Synbranchus marmoratus, is a protogynous, diandric species. During sex reversal, the ovarian germinal epithelium, which forms follicles containing an oocyte and encompassing follicle cells during the female portion of the life cycle, produces numerous invaginations, or acini, into the ovarian stroma. Within the acini, the gonia that formerly produced oocytes become spermatogonia, enter meiosis, and produce sperm. The acini are bounded by the basement membrane of the germinal epithelium. Epithelial cells of the female germinal epithelium, which formerly became follicle (granulosa) cells, now become Sertoli cells in the developing testis. Subsequently, lobules and testicular ducts form. The swamp eel testis has a lobular germinal compartment in both primary and secondary males, although the germinal compartment in testes of secondary males resides within the former ovarian lamellae. The germinal compartment, supported by a basement membrane, is composed of Sertoli and germ cells that give rise to sperm. Histological and immunohistochemical techniques were used to describe the five reproductive classes that were observed to occur during the annual reproductive cycle: regressed, early maturation, mid‐maturation, late maturation, and regression. These classes are differentiated by the presence of continuous or discontinuous germinal epithelia and by the types of germ cells present. Synbranchus marmoratus has a permanent germinal epithelium. Differences between the germinal compartment of the testes of primary and secondary males were not observed. J. Morphol. 257:107–126, 2003. © 2003 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.