Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Some experiences with human diploid cell strain-(HDCS) rabies vaccine in pre- and post-exposure vaccinated humans.

HDCS vaccine has been in official use in the F.R. G. for pre- and post-exposure vaccination of man, after having shown its superiority to the Hempt and duck embryo vaccine--as far as compatibility, antigenicity and protective capacity is concerned--since February 1977. HDCS vaccines of both manufacturers, Mérieux/Lyon and Behring/Marburg, did not produce any severe side effects in about 5000 vaccinees in West Germany when conditions of vaccine production were properly observed. The lack of neuropathogenicity of vaccines is stressed. Contamination by bacterial lipopolysaccharides, however, resulted in endotoxin shock in 32 out of 35 vaccinees with one vaccine lot. Testing for pyrogenicity of every vaccine lot should be carefully observed in future. When comparing antigenicity of different vaccine lots of both manufacturers, individual titers of complement-fixing and neutralizing antibodies were correlated with the antigenic values of the vaccines. Duration of immunity after one course of vaccination is approximately 2 years and can be extended by only 1 booster injection for an additional 3 years. Protective capacity of HDCS vaccine (using Essen scheme, 6 applications) seems to be very pronounced. So far, between 1973-1977, 68 individuals under severe risk were vaccinated post-exposure in West Germany and 45 individuals in Iran from 1975-76. No cases of rabies occurred in the vaccinees. HDCS vaccine in man induces a very early antibody response with appearance of IgM rabies specific antibodies on day 3, and IgG rabies specific antibodies on day 7 and an early IgM/IgG antibody conversion at that time.
Establishing A Clean Economy or Strengthening Indigenous Sovereignty: Conflicting & Complementary Narratives for Energy Transitions

I acknowledge with respect that the research and writing for this thesis was completed on the traditional territories of numerous Indigenous peoples including the Attowandaron/Attawandorak Neutral Peoples, Mississaugas of Credit River and the Coast Salish Peoples. As a researcher studying energy systems, I have remained consistently cognizant of the ways in which prevailing energy systems perpetuate and reinforce processes of ongoing colonialism. I have integrated this critical analysis into my work and consistently strive to build positive relationships while challenging destructive ones.
Molecular Evidence That the Eukaryotic THO/TREX Complex Is Required for Efficient Transcription Elongation*

THO/TREX is a conserved eukaryotic complex formed by the core THO complex plus proteins involved in mRNA metabolism and export such as Sub2 and Yra1. Mutations in any of the THO/TREX structural genes cause pleiotropic phenotypes such as transcription impairment, increased transcription-associated recombination, and mRNA export defects. To assay the relevance of THO/TREX complex in transcription, we performed in vitro transcription elongation assays in mutant cell extracts using supercoiled DNA templates containing two G-less cassettes. With these assays, we demonstrate that hpr1Δ, tho2Δ, and mft1Δ mutants of the THO complex and sub2 mutants show significant reductions in the efficiency of transcription elongation. The mRNA expression defect of hpr1Δ mutants was not due to an increase in mRNA decay, as determined by mRNA half-life measurements and mRNA time course accumulation experiments in the absence of Rrp6p exoribonuclease. This work demonstrates that THO and Sub2 are required for efficient transcription elongation, providing further evidence for the coupling between transcription and mRNA metabolism and export.
Incidence of CT Contrast Agent-Induced Nephropathy: Toward a More Accurate Estimation.

OBJECTIVE Acute kidney injury is common among hospitalized patients and likely leads to inflated reports of the incidence of CT contrast agent-induced nephropathy as a cause of acute kidney injury. For a more accurate estimation, we compared the incidence of acute kidney injury immediately after contrast agent administration and a few days afterward in the same population. We also controlled for a creatinine level increase starting before and continuing after CT, which may be incorrectly associated with the scan itself. MATERIALS AND METHODS After excluding patients undergoing dialysis, we included all adults who underwent CT from January 2006 through May 2013 in our health region. The incidence of acute kidney injury (Acute Kidney Injury Network stages) and dialysis after acute kidney injury were assessed in the immediate period (24-48 hours) and in a delayed period (72-96 hours) after the scan. New acute kidney injury in either period occurred if the creatinine level had increased at a greater rate than that in a preceding 24-hour interval. The incidence of acute kidney injury and dialysis after acute kidney injury attributable to CT were calculated by subtracting the delayed incidence from the immediate incidence. RESULTS Incidences of acute kidney injury and dialysis after acute kidney injury attributable to contrast-enhanced CT were statistically insignificant across glomerular filtration rate (GFR) subgroups. Acute kidney injury incidences (Acute Kidney Injury Network stage I or worse) were 0.5% (95% CI, -0.4% to 1.4%) for GFR greater than 60 mL/min/1.73 m(2), 2.4% (95% CI, -0.7% to 5.6%) for GFR 30-59 mL/min/1.73 m(2), -4.3% (95% CI, -19.8% to 11.3%) for GFR 15-29 mL/min/1.73 m(2), and 0% (95% CI, -24.5% to 24.5%) for GFR less than 15 mL/min/1.73 m(2). CONCLUSION There appears to be a minimal risk of CT contrast agent-induced nephropathy at mild to moderate levels of renal dysfunction.
Early application of generic mortality risk scores in presumed meningococcal disease*

Objective: Mortality from meningococcal disease typically occurs within 24 hrs of intensive care unit (ICU) admission. An early, accurate mortality-risk tool may aid in trial design for novel therapies. We assessed the performance of two generic scores that assign mortality risk within 1 hr of ICU admission: the Preintensive Care Pediatric Risk of Mortality (Pre-ICU PRISM) and Pediatric Index of Mortality (PIM). Design: Prospective, observational study over 21 months. Setting: Two tertiary pediatric ICUs accepting referrals from southeast England. Patients: Patients were 165 consecutive children with meningococcal disease. Ages ranged from 0.1 to 17 yrs (median 2.3 yrs). Interventions: None. Measurements and Main Results: PIM demonstrated greater sensibility, with complete data collected in 93% of cases, compared with 35% for the pre-ICU PRISM. Both scores discriminated well. The area under the receiver operating characteristic curve was 0.90 (95% confidence interval, 0.81–1.00) for PIM and 0.94 (95% confidence interval, 0.88–0.98) for Pre-ICU PRISM; this did not change when applied to the subgroup of patients with complete data. Both scores calibrated poorly, overestimating mortality in the medium-risk strata (and also in the high-risk stratum in the case of Pre-ICU PRISM). When used as a stratification tool for a hypothetical trial (60% reduction in mortality, 80% power), the scores allowed for a reduction in study size by 50% (PIM) and 43% (pre-ICU PRISM). Conclusions: Pre-ICU PRISM and PIM both discriminate well but calibrate poorly when applied to a cohort of children with meningococcal sepsis. Both scores provide an effective means of stratification for clinical trial purposes. The main advantage for PIM appears to be ease of data collection.
ROSIEE: Reduction of Self Inflicted Queuing Delay in WebRTC

WebRTC is a promising standard for real-time communication in the browser. It supports transfer of delay sensitive real-time video and audio material using SRTP, as well as transfer of arbitrary data using SCTP. The congestion control algorithms of these two transport protocols are optimized for two different goals: While RTP tries to keep delays minimal, SCTP tries to maximize throughput. This contradiction leads to an excess in queuing delay and ultimately a deterioration of user experience when these protocols are used simultaneously. ,, The work at hand introduces a novel algorithm for coupling the two transport protocols in order to achieve both goals at the same time. We have implemented our algorithm in the OMNeT++/INET simulation environment and present results to prove that the algorithm works as intended. We found that our approach keeps queuing delays in tolerable regions for all link configurations tested, enabling the concurrent use of WebRTC Media Channels and SCTP Data Channels independent of the queue length of the access router.
Who Broke the Build? Automatically Identifying Changes That Induce Test Failures in Continuous Integration at Google Scale

Quickly identifying and fixing code changes that introduce regressions is critical to keep the momentum on software development, especially in very large scale software repositories with rapid development cycles, such as at Google. Identifying and fixing such regressions is one of the most expensive, tedious, and time consuming tasks in the software development life-cycle. Therefore, there is a high demand for automated techniques that can help developers identify such changes while minimizing manual human intervention. Various techniques have recently been proposed to identify such code changes. However, these techniques have shortcomings that make them unsuitable for rapid development cycles as at Google. In this paper, we propose a novel algorithm to identify code changes that introduce regressions, and discuss case studies performed at Google on 140 projects. Based on our case studies, our algorithm automatically identifies the change that introduced the regression in the top-5 among thousands of candidates 82% of the time, and provides considerable savings on manual work developers need to perform.
Apoptosis is triggered when prosurvival Bcl-2 proteins cannot restrain Bax

A central issue in the control of apoptosis is whether its essential mediators Bax and Bak must be restrained by Bcl-2-like prosurvival relatives to prevent their damaging mitochondria and unleashing apoptosis. The issue is particularly vexed for Bax, which is largely a cytosolic monomer in unstressed cells. To determine whether Bax regulation requires its binding by prosurvival relatives, we replaced a conserved aspartate in its BH3 interaction domain with arginine. Bax D68R functioned and behaved like wild-type Bax in localization and activation but had greatly impaired binding to the prosurvival family members. Nevertheless, Bcl-xL remained able to block apoptosis induced by Bax D68R. Whereas cells with sufficient Bcl-xL tolerated expression of Bax D68R, it provoked apoptosis when Bcl-xL was absent, downregulated, or inactivated. Moreover, Bax D68R rendered membrane bound by a C-terminal anchor mutation overwhelmed endogenous Bcl-xL and killed cells. These unexpected results suggest that engagement of Bax by its prosurvival relatives is a major barrier to its full activation. We propose that the Bcl-2-like proteins must capture the small proportion of Bax molecules with an exposed BH3 domain, probably on the mitochondrial membrane, to prevent Bax-imposed cell death, but that Bcl-xL also controls Bax by other mechanisms.
Administrative Values and Public Personnel Management

Civil service reforms implemented over the past 35 years in many countries around the world have relaxed traditional merit system rules, decentralized the personnel function, and augmented agency and managerial discretion. One objective of these reforms has been to boost government productivity and increase the efficiency of core personnel management functions such as hiring and firing employees, but much of the available evidence suggests that reforms commonly implemented may serve political or ideological objectives better than performance-related goals. We argue for a fuller appreciation of the political motivations for reforms and a broader understanding of their implications.
Modulation of DNA End Joining by Nuclear Proteins*

DNA double strand breaks in mammalian cells are primarily repaired by homologous recombination and non-homologous end joining (NHEJ). NHEJ may either be error-free or mutagenic with deletions or insertions at the joint. Recent studies showed that DNA ends can also be joined via microhomologous sequences flanking the break point especially when proteins responsible for NHEJ, such as Ku, are absent. Microhomology-mediated end joining (MHEJ) is always accompanied by a deletion that spans one of the two homologous sequences and the intervening sequence, if any. In this study we evaluated several factors affecting the relative contribution of MHEJ to DNA end joining using nuclear extracts and DNA substrates containing 10-bp repeats at the ends. We found that the occurrence of MHEJ is determined by the relative abundance of nuclear proteins. At low DNA/protein ratios, an error-free end-joining mechanism predominated over MHEJ. As the DNA/protein ratio increased, MHEJ became predominant. We show that the nuclear proteins that contribute to the inhibition of the error-prone MHEJ include Ku and histone H1. Treatment of extracts with flap endonuclease 1 antiserum significantly reduced MHEJ. Addition of a 17-bp intervening sequence between the microhomologous sequences significantly reduced the efficiency of MHEJ. Thus, this cell-free assay provides a platform for evaluating factors modulating end joining.
Effectiveness of the Normal-Mode Ruby Laser and the Combined (Normal-Mode Plus Q-Switched) Ruby Laser in the Treatment of Congenital Melanocytic Nevi: A Comparative Study

The effect of the normal-mode ruby laser (NMRL) and the combined (normal mode plus Q-switched) ruby laser on congenital melanocytic nevi (CMN) was evaluated, and the degree to which both laser treatment regimens remove melanocytes was compared in 15 patients. Each nevus was marked to designate half of the lesion for the NMRL treatment and half of the lesion for combined ruby laser treatment. The efficacy of each laser treatment was correlated with the degree of clinical improvement determined by photographic assessment, histological examination, and melanin reflectance spectrometry before and 3 months after laser treatment. A single treatment using the NMRL with energy fluences of both 20 J per square centimeter and 30 J per square centimeter resulted in a slight, but not significant, improvement in lightening of pigmentation (42.61% and 30.38%, respectively). A better clinical response (excellent to good) and higher percentage of lightening (64.45%–72.43%) was noted in the combined ruby laser-treated areas than the NMRL-treated areas. Histological results showed that the combined ruby laser provided a marked decrease in the number of the nevomelanocytic nests in both the junctional area and the papillary and reticular dermis, whereas the NMRL (with energy fluences of either 20 J per square centimeter or 30 J per square centimeter) caused a decrease in the junctional area and the papillary dermis. None of the nevi had complete clearance of the pigmentation after a single treatment. Therefore, multiple (four to five) treatment sessions are needed to cause complete removal of nevomelanocytic nests in CMN. In conclusion, the combined ruby laser is more effective than the NMRL alone in the treatment of CMN without scarring or textural change of the skin.
What to Do with a Gift of Farmland: Part One

Many people are given farmland and this phenomenon will continue. People who receive the gift of farmland may want to retain ownership for a variety of reasons: the land is already paid for; it may increase in value; it may have been in the family for a long time; or it may allow participation in production agriculture. Lack of land ownership costs may reduce the risk of land ownership. The purpose of this manuscript is to determine whether a person who has been given farmland can afford to retain ownership. A twelveyear analysis was used to determine the net income and risk associated with three strategies for retaining ownership.
Control strategy for the front-end DC-DC converter to reduce the second-order harmonic current in the two-stage inverter

The instantaneous output power of the two-stage single-phase inverter pulsates at twice the output voltage frequency, generating second-order harmonic current (SHC) in the front-end DC-DC converter. To reduce the SHC, this paper proposes a control strategy based on the virtual impedance. For the case that adopting a resistor as the virtual impedance, a closed-loop parameter design method is presented, indicating that this instance is not beneficial to increasing the voltage loop crossover frequency (VLCF). To overcome this problem, a control strategy with inner inductor current feedback through the band-pass filter(BPF) is put forward and a damping resistor is added into the BPF in order to improve the stability margin. The proposed control strategy can not only reduce the SHC significantly, but also improve the dynamic performance of the front-end DC/DC converter effectively while guarantee the converter working in stability. Finally, an 1kVA prototype is built and tested in the lab. The experimental results are given to verify the effectiveness of the proposed control strategy.
The Cardiac Renin-Angiotensin System in STZ-Induced Diabetes

To determine the effect of diabetes on the cardiac renin-angiotensin system, we compared angiotensin II binding density and renin, angiotensinogen, and type 1 angiotensin II (AT1) receptor mRNA levels in hearts of Sprague-Dawley rats 14 days after the administration of streptozotocin (STZ), in vehicle-treated control rats, and in STZ-administered rats made euglycemic with insulin. Myocardial angiotensin II receptor density, determined using an in situ autoradiographic technique, was increased significantly in hyperglycemic diabetic rats in comparison with control rats and euglycemic diabetic rats (P < 0.01) as a result of an increase in both AT1 and AT2 (type 2 angiotensin II) subtypes. The myocardial AT1 receptor mRNA level, determined by slot blot hybridization, was also significantly greater in the hyperglycemic diabetic rats (P < 0.005). Neither plasma renin concentration nor cardiac renin or angiotensinogen mRNA levels differed among the three study groups. In an additional experiment, control and diabetic rats were infused with angiotensin II (200 ng · kg−1 · min−1 i.p. for 7 days) or vehicle. Plasma renin concentration decreased significantly, whereas no significant changes occurred in cardiac renin or angiotensinogen steady-state mRNA levels. As in the first experiment, levels of AT1 receptor mRNA were significantly greater in the diabetic rats. Thus, myocardial angiotensin II receptor density is increased in diabetic rats in association with an increase in steady-state AT1 receptor mRNA levels, an abnormality that appears to be independent of changes in the circulating renin-angiotensin system.
Targeting HER2 signaling pathway for radiosensitization: Alternative strategy for therapeutic resistance

Several studies have indicated the potential value of targeting HER-2 signaling to enhance the anti-tumor activity of ionizing radiation. However, therapeutic resistance resulting from several factors, including activation of the downstream pathway, represents a major obstacle to treatment. Here, we investigated whether inhibitors targeting downstream of HER-2 signaling would radiosensitize SKBR3 breast cancer cells that exhibit overamplification of HER2. Selective inhibition of MEK-ERK signaling using pharmacologic inhibitors (PD98059, UO126) did not increase the radiosensitivity of SKBR3 cells. Selective inhibition of the PI3K-AKT-mTOR pathway using pharmacologic inhibitors (LY294002, AKT inhibitor VIII, Rapamycin) significantly attenuated expression of p-AKT and p-70S6K, respectively and radiosensitized SKBR3 cells. MCF-7 cells those did not over-express HER-2, showed less radiosensitization compared to SKBR3 cells by inhibition of this pathway. Pre-treatment with these inhibitors also caused significant abrogation of typical G2 arrest following ionizing radiation and induced marked prolongation of γH2AX foci indicating impairment of DNA damage repair. A dual inhibitor of Class I PI3K and mTOR, PI103 effectively radiosensitized SKBR3 cells and showed significant prolongation of γH2AX foci. Inhibition of PI3K-AKT signaling was associated with down-regulation of DNA-PKs, respectively. While apoptosis was the major mode of cell death when the cells were pretreated with LY294002 or AKT inhibitor VIII, the cells were pretreated by rapamycin or PI103 showed mixed mode of cell death including autophagy. Our results suggest possible mechanisms to counteract the HER-2 prosurvival signaling implicated in radioresistance, and offer an alternative strategy to overcome resistance to HER-2 inhibitors combined with radiation.
Banking on Infrastructure: Exploring the Fiscal Impacts of State Infrastructure Bank (SIB) Loans on Leveraging State and Local Transportation Investment

State Infrastructure Banks (SIBs) are revolving transportation infrastructure investment funds that are capitalized with federal assistance funds and state‐matching funds. Despite decades of use, research on innovative infrastructure finance lags behind the practice. Little research has been conducted on examining whether SIBs achieve the goal of increasing state and local transportation investment through their awarded loans and other financing activities. To fill the void, the primary purpose of the paper is to empirically estimate the fiscal effects of SIB loans on leveraging state and local highway capital investment. Using panel data consisting of SIB loan parameters made by the seven states from 1998 to 2010, the study finds that one dollar of three‐year lagged SIB loan disbursements to state and local highway project sponsors will increase state and local highway capital expenditure in the current year by nearly three dollars. In addition, the study confirms that higher SIB loan interest rates strengthen the role of the SIB program on stimulating state and local highway capital investment.
Eight-Year Experience With a Neurosurgical Checklist

Increased emphasis on patient safety in hospitals worldwide has become a critical goal for health care facilities and providers over the past decade. Resident work hour restrictions, handwashing efforts, medication reconciliation, procedural pauses, and a variety of improved communication mechanisms among all providers have been instituted. In an effort to improve patient safety and quality in the operating room and to reduce any potential errors in care, the Department of Neurological Surgery at Mayo Clinic in Arizona initiated an intraoperative checklist program 8 years ago. The concept was to develop a tool to maintain and improve patient safety in the operating rooms that would be both effective and practical. The authors report on their 8-year experience with this tool and review the literature concerning surgical checklists.