Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Surface Glycans of Candida albicans and Other Pathogenic Fungi: Physiological Roles, Clinical Uses, and Experimental Challenges

SUMMARY Although fungi have always been with us as commensals and pathogens, fungal infections have been increasing in frequency over the past few decades. There is a growing body of literature describing the involvement of carbohydrate groups in various aspects of fungal disease. Carbohydrates comprising the cell wall or capsule, or as a component of glycoproteins, are the fungal cell surface entities most likely to be exposed to the surrounding environment. Thus, the fungus-host interaction is likely to involve carbohydrates before DNA, RNA, or even protein. The interaction between fungal and host cells is also complex, and early studies using whole cells or crude cell fractions often produced seemingly conflicting results. What was needed, and what has been developing, is the ability to identify specific glycan structures and determine how they interact with immune system components. Carbohydrate analysis is complicated by the complexity of glycan structures and by the challenges of separating and detecting carbohydrates experimentally. Advances in carbohydrate chemistry have enabled us to move from the foundation of composition analysis to more rapid characterization of specific structures. This, in turn, will lead to a greater understanding of how fungi coexist with their hosts as commensals or exist in conflict as pathogens.
Insulin relaxes bladder via PI3K/AKT/eNOS pathway activation in mucosa: unfolded protein response‐dependent insulin resistance as a cause of obesity‐associated overactive bladder

• Metabolic syndrome, obesity and insulin resistance are risk factors for overactive bladder, but little is known about the impact of insulin resistance on bladder functioning. • We aimed to investigate the insulin effects in murine and human bladder, and whether its defective action contributes to the bladder dysfunction associated with obesity. • Under physiological conditions, insulin relaxes urinary bladder through the release of nitric oxide from the mucosal layer, and this mechanism is impaired in bladders from insulin‐resistant obese mice. • The defective insulin action in bladder mucosa from obese mice is due to endoplasmic reticulum stress, which remarkably contributes to the bladder overactivity in obesity conditions. • Our results enable a better understanding of the mechanism of action of insulin in the urinary bladder and how its defective action in mucosa contributes to bladder dysfunction in conditions of obesity‐associated insulin resistance.
Rodiče na trhu práce: mezi prací a péčí

In this article the authors map the theoretical arguments on the gen- der dimension of the welfare state. They propose three integral dimensions of conceptualising the exercise of parenthood in Czech society in relation to gender equality in the labour market that co-determine the position of parents in the labour market. The authors analyse these dimensions using data from two representative sociological surveys. 1) The right to be a parent (to care for one's child) and the right to work: the measures provided in the Czech welfare state are based on the myth that there are two separate worlds of work and care in conformity with the gender principle, even though there are no signifi cant differences between Czech men and women in terms of the value of work in their lives. 2) Equality or non-discrimination in parenthood: the right to work of mothers of young children is violated in the context of gener- ally increasing gender inequalities in the labour market. 3) The opportunity to achieve a work/life balance: in Czech society fl exible forms of employment are uncommon, working hours tend to have a fi xed start and fi nish, or there is negative fl exibility, which renders a work/life balance impossible. The way in which state policy defi nes and employers apply the conditions of parenthood in relation to the labour market and in the context of the gender structure of Czech society makes parenthood a signifi cant handicap for the social inclu- sion of women who are mothers of young children in the Czech Republic.
The Rich Domain of Risk

The literature has distinguished decisions made under risk (with objective probabilities) and uncertainty (with unknown probabilities). Abdellaoui et al. (2011) showed that the domain of uncertainty is rich, i.e., people behave differently depending on the source of uncertainty. They assumed, however, that events with objective probabilities constitute a unique source. We report on two experiments challenging this assumption. We find that the domain of risk is also rich in the sense that subjects behave differently when they face risky bets based on simple or more complex events. Further, we find a tight association between attitudes toward complex risky bets and attitudes toward both ambiguity and compound lotteries. These results raise questions about the characterization and the modeling of ambiguity aversion.
[Association of estrogen receptor β gene polymorphisms with hypertension in postmenopausal women].

OBJECTIVE To explore the association between estrogen receptor β (ERβ) gene polymorphisms and hypertension in postmenopausal women. METHODS The relationship of two polymorphisms (rs944050 and rs4986938) with hypertension was examined in 71 postmenopausal women with hypertension and 50 healthy age-matched controls. RESULTS In hypertension and control groups, the ERβ allelic frequencies of A and G were 0.500, 0.500, 0.540, 0.460; 0.077, 0.923, 0.170, 0.830 respectively. The genotypic distributions of both polymorphisms stayed within Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium. For polymorphism rs4986938, statistical difference existed between the wild-type genotype and a combination of heterozygous and homozygous variant genotypes (P < 0.05). The variant allele A of rs4986938 in ERβ gene decreased the risk of hypertension (OR = 0.41, 95%CI 0.18-0.92). CONCLUSION The polymorphism rs4986938 in ERβ gene was associated with an elevated risk of hypertension in Chinese Han postmenopausal women.
Transmission of Atypical Bovine Prions to Mice Transgenic for Human Prion Protein

To assess risk for cattle-to-human transmission of prions that cause uncommon forms of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), we inoculated mice expressing human PrP Met129 with field isolates. Unlike classical BSE agent, L-type prions appeared to propagate in these mice with no obvious transmission barrier. H-type prions failed to infect the mice.
An Improvement of Payload-Based Intrusion Detection Using Fuzzy Support Vector Machine

Intrusion detection plays a very important role in network security system. It is proved to analyze the payload of network protocol and to model a payload-based anomaly detector (PAYL) can successfully detect outliers of network servers. This paper extends these works by applying a new noise-reduced fuzzy support vector machine (fSVM) to improve the detection rate. The new method named PAYL-fSVM employs reconstruction error based fuzzy membership function to reduce the noisy of the data and to solve the sharp boundary problem. Experimental results based on DARPA data set demonstrated that the proposed scheme can achieve higher detection rate at very low false positive rate than the original PAYL method.
In-Mouth Mechanisms Leading to Flavor Release and Perception

During eating, foods are submitted to two main oral processes—chewing, including biting and crushing with teeth, and progressive impregnation by saliva resulting in the formation of a cohesive bolus and swallowing of the bolus. Texture influences the chewing behavior, including mastication and salivation, and in turn, these parameters influence texture perception and bolus formation. During this complex mouth process, flavor compounds are progressively released from the food matrix. This phenomenon is mainly dependent on the food texture, the composition and in-mouth breakdown, and on saliva impregnation and activity, but an individual's anatomical and physiological aspects characteristics should also be taken into account. This article reviews the knowledge and progresses on in-mouth processes leading to food breakdown and flavor release and affecting perception. Relationships between food texture and composition, food breakdown, oral physiology, and flavor release are developed and discussed. This review includes not only the mechanical aspects of oral physiology but also the biological aspects such as the influence of saliva composition, activity, and regulation on flavor perception. In vitro and in silico approaches are also described.
Food allergy among U.S. children: trends in prevalence and hospitalizations.

U.S. D Food allergy is a potentially serious immune response to eating specific foods or food additives. Eight types of food account for over 90% of allergic reactions in affected individuals: milk, eggs, peanuts, tree nuts, fish, shellfish, soy, and wheat (1,2). Reactions to these foods by an allergic person can range from a tingling sensation around the mouth and lips and hives to death, depending on the severity of the allergy. The mechanisms by which a person develops an allergy to specific foods are largely unknown. Food allergy is more prevalent in children than adults, and a majority of affected children will “outgrow” food allergies with age. However, food allergy can sometimes become a lifelong concern (1). Food allergies can greatly affect children and their families’ well-being. There are some indications that the prevalence of food allergy may be increasing in the United States and in other countries (2–4).
Intra-arterial versus intra-venous thrombolysis within and after the first 3 hours of stroke onset

The NINDS trial demonstrated for the first time the effectiveness of intravenous thrombolysis in improving outcome after acute ischemic stroke. The absolute benefit of this intervention was 11–13% greater chance of being normal or near normal (MRS ≤ 1) at 3 months. However, if patients with severe stroke were considered (NIHSS ≥ 20), the absolute benefit dropped to 5–6%, indicating that IV thrombolysis may not be as effective for large vessel occlusion. This observation was further supported by TCD studies that clearly demonstrated that large artery occlusions had a recanalization rate of 13–18% with IV rt-PA. Intra-arterial thrombolysis achieves recanalization rates of 60–70%. Since tissue viability is clearly important, it is time to stop defining rigid time windows and if there is a large penumbra (20–50%) and the occlusion is in a large artery, there exists a logic and a growing evidence to consider either bridge therapy or direct intra-arterial therapy.
Beneficial Cardiovascular Actions of Eplerenone in the Spontaneously Hypertensive Rat

Background: Aldosterone has been implicated as a potential mediator of cardiac and vascular damage in a variety of disorders. This study examined the role of aldosterone and its interplay with the renin-angiotensin system in the pathogenesis of hypertension. To this end, the effects of the aldosterone antagonist eplerenone and the angiotensin converting enzyme inhibitor lisinopril on cardiovascular mass, myocardial collagen, and coronary circulation were examined in spontaneously hypertensive rats. Methods: Male, 22-week-old rats were randomly divided into 4 groups (12 in each). The control group received no treatment, the second group was given eplerenone (100 mg/kg/day), the third received lisinopril (3 mg/kg/day), and the fourth was given eplerenone and lisinopril. After 12 weeks of respective treatments, systemic and regional hemodynamics and cardiovascular mass indexes were measured in conscious instrumented rats. Results: Eplerenone decreased arterial pressure but did not affect left ventricular mass or hydroxyproline concentration (an estimate of collagen). It did, however, reduce minimal coronary vascular resistance and increased coronary flow reserve. Lisinopril decreased arterial pressure and ventricular mass but did not affect regional hemodynamics. The combination therapy produced synergistic effects. Conclusion: Aldosterone antagonism improved coronary and systemic hemodynamics in adult spontaneously hypertensive rats but did not affect cardiovascular mass indexes. The finding that lisinopril and eplerenone decreased arterial pressure to the same extent but had different cardiovascular effects suggested that these effects might be pressure independent.
Do physicians attend to base rates? Prevalence data and statistical discrimination in the diagnosis of coronary heart disease.

OBJECTIVE To examine whether physicians attend to gender prevalence data in diagnostic decision making for coronary heart disease (CHD) and to test the hypothesis that previously reported gender differences in CHD diagnostic certainty are due to discrimination arising from reliance on prevalence data ("statistical discrimination"). DATA SOURCES A vignette-based experiment of 256 randomly sampled primary care physicians conducted from 2006 to 2007. STUDY DESIGN Factorial experiment. Physicians observed patient presentations of cardinal CHD symptoms, standardized across design factors (gender, race, age, socioeconomic status). DATA COLLECTION Structured interview. PRINCIPAL FINDINGS Most physicians perceived the U.S. population CHD prevalence as higher in men (48.4 percent) or similar by gender (44.9 percent). For the observed patient, 52 percent did not change their CHD diagnostic certainty based on patient gender. Forty-eight percent of physicians were inconsistent in their population-level and individual-level CHD assessments. Physicians' assessments of CHD prevalence did not attenuate the observed gender effect in diagnostic certainty for the individual patient. CONCLUSIONS Given an adequate presentation of CHD symptoms, physicians may deviate from their prevalence data during diagnostic decision making. Physicians' priors on CHD prevalence did not explain the gender effect in CHD certainty. Future research should examine personal stereotypes as an explanation for gender differences.
The Leaf Epidermome of Catharanthus roseus Reveals Its Biochemical Specialization[W][OA]

Catharanthus roseus is the sole commercial source of the monoterpenoid indole alkaloids (MIAs), vindoline and catharanthine, components of the commercially important anticancer dimers, vinblastine and vincristine. Carborundum abrasion technique was used to extract leaf epidermis–enriched mRNA, thus sampling the epidermome, or complement, of proteins expressed in the leaf epidermis. Random sequencing of the derived cDNA library established 3655 unique ESTs, composed of 1142 clusters and 2513 singletons. Virtually all known MIA pathway genes were found in this remarkable set of ESTs, while only four known genes were found in the publicly available Catharanthus EST data set. Several novel MIA pathway candidate genes were identified, as demonstrated by the cloning and functional characterization of loganic acid O-methyltransferase involved in secologanin biosynthesis. The pathways for triterpene biosynthesis were also identified, and metabolite analysis showed that oleanane-type triterpenes were localized exclusively to the cuticular wax layer. The pathways for flavonoid and very-long-chain fatty acid biosynthesis were also located in this cell type. The results illuminate the biochemical specialization of Catharanthus leaf epidermis for the production of multiple classes of metabolites. The value and versatility of this EST data set for biochemical and biological analysis of leaf epidermal cells is also discussed.
Design and Implementation of Semantic based Search Engine for Punjabi

The World Wide Web (WWW), helps to share information globally, the amount information has outgrown billions of databases. Its size, heterogeneity and human –oriented semantics pose a serious obstacle in search for desired information. Traditional search engines like Google help naive users to access web resources and perform only word based indexing and searching may provide with irrelevant documents that are presented to user. Addition of semantics to search engine solves the two problems associated with search engines low precision and low recall. Work has been done in English and Hindi dialect but not much work has been done for Punjabi dialect. This paper describes the design and working of online semantic based search engine for Punjabi ‘UDDAN’ and also proposed an algorithm so as the results obtained have high precision.
Numerical investigation on a Body-Centric Scenario at W Band

Numerical analysis has been presented for a shortrange on-body channel at 94 GHz. Finite Difference Time Domain technique has been adopted to investigate the scenario. Since at higher frequency FDTD becomes computationally expensive, a parallel version of the method has been implemented in an in-house software. Path loss values have been calculated for head to shoulder link. Results are compared with measurements and commercially available software adopting a ray-based approach. A further analysis is provided for both parallel and perpendicular polarization of the source.
Estimating the Leverage Parameter of Continuous-Time Stochastic Volatility Models Using High Frequency S&P 500 and VIX

This paper proposes a new method for estimating continuous-time stochastic volatility (SV) models for the S&P 500 stock index process using intraday high-frequency observations of both the S&P 500 index and the Chicago Board of Exchange (CBOE) implied (or expected) volatility index (VIX). Intraday high-frequency observations data have become readily available for an increasing number of financial assets and their derivatives in recent years, but it is well known that attempts to estimate the parameters of popular continuous-time models can lead to nonsensical estimates due to severe intraday seasonality. A primary purpose of the paper is to estimate the leverage parameter, ρ , that is, the correlation between the two Brownian motions driving the diffusive components of the price process and its spot variance process, respectively. We show that, under the special case of Heston's (1993) square-root SV model without measurement errors, the "realized leverage", or the realized covariation of the price and VIX processes divided by the product of the realized volatilities of the two processes, converges to ρ in probability as the time intervals between observations shrink to zero, even if the length of the whole sample period is fixed. Finite sample simulation results show that the proposed estimator delivers accurate estimates of the leverage parameter, unlike existing methods.
Investigating Students' Perception Towards Economics Education

This paper investigates the perception and attitudes of non-business major students in Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM) towards economics education and their relationship on students’ academic performance. One of the key performance indicators in the academic programme of the university is to achieve less than twenty percent failures in all subjects offered. A four-semester examination results revealed that students constantly obtained high failure rate in two economics introductory subjects. Using students taking these two economics courses as respondents, dimensions of attitudes towards economics education were identified through the use of an exploratory factor analysis. Four factors were extracted from a 26item questionnaire identified as ‘Value’, ‘Difficulty’, ‘Cognitive’ and ‘Affective’. Cronbach’s Alpha for the four factors was acceptable. The findings suggested that there was no significant difference between male and female students on the four dimensions of attitude even though the achievement of female students’ was higher than males. Students who did not perform were found to have a more negative attitude on the four dimensions of attitude compared to
Synthesis of Silver Nanoparticles using Facile Wet Chemical Route

Stable aqueous monodispersed silver nanoparticles were synthesised by reducing silver nitrate using various sugars such as glucose, fructose, lactose, and sucrose at 55-60 oC. A mixture of two stabilising agents, polyvinyl pyrrolidone (PVP) of molecular weight (MW 40, 000) and gelatin plays a decisive part in controlling size and shape of superfine silver nanoparticles. Using PVP, better control of particle size was obtained, whereas a mixture of PVP, and gelatin resulted in sea urchin kind of structure. Effects of several processing parameters such as pH, quantities of alkaline solution, reaction time, concentration of stabilising agent, and the metal/dispersant ratio were investigated. The suspensions were stable for at least one week. Silver nanoparticles can be easily collected by centrifugation on mixing with sufficient amount of acetone. Structural characterisation of synthesised silver nanoparticles was carried out by X-ray diffraction (XRD), which shows that the as-synthesised silver nanoparticles are face-centered cubic crystalline. Chemical characterisations of as-synthesized silver nanoparticles were done using inductively-coupled plasma-optical emission spectrometry (ICP-OES) and LECO gas analysers. The optical properties of silver nanoparticles were monitored using UV-Vis spectrophotometer. Role of stabilising agent in protecting the silver nanoparticles was studied using fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR). Particle size and distribution were characterised using smallangle X-ray scattering (SAXS), zeta particle size analyser (PSA), scanning electron microscopy, and transmission electron microscopy. The average particle size of the as-synthesised silver nanoparticles was 35 nm.Defence Science Journal, 2009, 59(4), pp.447-455, DOI:http://dx.doi. org/10.14429/dsj.59. 1545
RetinotopicNET: An Efficient Simulator for Retinotopic Visual Architectures

RetinotopicNET is an efficient simulator for neural architectures with retinotopic-like receptive fields. The system has two main characteristics: it is event-driven and it takes advantage of the retinotopic arrangement in the receptive fields. The dynamics of the simulator are driven by the spike events of the simple integrate-and-fire neurons. By using an implicit synaptic rule to represent the synapses, RetinotopicNET achieves a great reduction of memory requirement for simulation. We show that under such conditions the system is fit for the simulation of very large networks of integrate-and-fire neurons. Furthermore we test RetinotopicNET in the simulation of a complex neural architecture for the ventral visual pathway. We prove that the system is linearly scalable with respect to the number of neurons in the simulation.
DIGITAL RE-DISCOVERY OF CULTURE GAME OF INQUIRY & THE PHYSICALITY OF SOUL

Politics and Religion are both by nature sociological phenomena. That is to say, both bind communities together. And both divide communities from one another. Both emerge from and colour the Culture of the community. In this paper we focus on culture and religious issues in the South-Eastern part of Europe (SEE), paying particular attention to Bulgaria and Macedonia. The religions in question are, on the one hand Orthodox, and on the other Islam. Issues of conflict which we consider, are schism and its resolution or at least cohabitation, and coercion by the State to give a common identity to all its citizens based on common language or common religion. A digital re-discovery of culture game of inquiry is chosen as the means by which to conduct an investigation into these issues. For this purpose we introduce the avatar, an American of Turkish background from Chicago who wishes to find out more about grandfather Habib Ismail who emigrated from Debre, Macedonia in 1923 CE. This kind of game of the digital re-discovery of culture often begins with a personal narrative called a Backstory. Being played out on the World-wide Web (WWW), the playing needs physical grounding, a physicality of soul. The game was designed and played, and Macedonia experienced as outcome. Following the search of the avatar we are led to discover positive surprises that bode well for religious issues on the Internet.