Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
'Prevalence and antimicrobial susceptibility of Listeria monocytogenes and methicillin‐resistant Staphylococcus aureus strains from raw meat and meat products in Zaria, Nigeria

The bacterial genera Listeria and Staphylococcus have been frequently isolated from food products and are responsible for a number of animal and human diseases. The aim of the study was to simultaneously isolate and characterize L. monocytogenes and Staphylococcus species from 300 samples of raw meat and meat products, to determine the susceptibility of the organisms to commonly used antimicrobial agents and to determine the presence of haemolysin A (hyl) virulence gene in L. monocytogenes and staphylococcal cassette chromosome mecA (SCCmec) gene in the Staph. aureus isolates using PCR. Of the 85 Listeria isolates tested, 12 L. monocytogenes were identified and tested for their sensitivity to 14 antimicrobial agents. All the 12 isolates (100%) were resistant to nine antimicrobial agents, but however sensitive to gentamicin. Only one isolate was found to harbour the hylA gene. Twenty‐nine isolates were confirmed as Staph. aureus by the Microbact 12S identification system and were all presumptively identified as methicillin‐resistant Staph. aureus species using oxacillin‐resistant Staph. aureus basal medium (ORSAB). The 29 Staph. aureus isolates were tested for their sensitivity to 16 antimicrobial agents, and 11 were resistant to methicillin. None of the 11 Staph. aureus isolates harboured the methicillin resistance, mecA gene.
A Blind Adaptive MMSE Multiuser Detector over Multipath CDMA Channels and its Analysis

Based on the refinement-only fast subspace tracking (RO-FST) algorithm to adaptively estimate the signal sub-space, a blind adaptive SVD-based minimum-mean-square-error (MMSE) multiuser detector is proposed in this paper for asynchronous direct-sequence code-division-multiple-access (DS-CDMA) systems over multipath fading channels. Numerical results show that the proposed detector gives low computational complexity and good performance in terms of signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) and bit-error-rate (BER). In addition, we apply the perturbation analysis of the proposed adaptive detector to derive the closed-form expressions for the mean-square error (MSE) and SINR. The analytical results are shown to match well with the simulation results.
Using Epstein-Barr Viral Load Assays To Diagnose, Monitor, and Prevent Posttransplant Lymphoproliferative Disorder

SUMMARY Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) DNA measurement is being incorporated into routine medical practice to help diagnose, monitor, and predict posttransplant lymphoproliferative disorder (PTLD) in immunocompromised graft recipients. PTLD is an aggressive neoplasm that almost always harbors EBV DNA within the neoplastic lymphocytes, and it is often fatal if not recognized and treated promptly. Validated protocols, commercial reagents, and automated instruments facilitate implementation of EBV load assays by real-time PCR. When applied to either whole blood or plasma, EBV DNA levels reflect clinical status with respect to EBV-related neoplasia. While many healthy transplant recipients have low viral loads, high EBV loads are strongly associated with current or impending PTLD. Complementary laboratory assays as well as histopathologic examination of lesional tissue help in interpreting modest elevations in viral load. Circulating EBV levels in serial samples reflect changes in tumor burden and represent an effective, noninvasive tool for monitoring the efficacy of therapy. In high-risk patients, serial testing permits early clinical intervention to prevent progression toward frank PTLD. Restoring T cell immunity against EBV is a major strategy for overcoming PTLD, and novel EBV-directed therapies are being explored to thwart virus-driven neoplasia.
AT_TV: Broadcast Television and Radio Retrieval

This paper reports recent work at ATT it is indexed automatically from the air. While many digital video library projects focus solely on broadcast news, we have broadened our efforts to produce a continually updated index of all UK terrestrial TV output. We have investigated the use of both video and audio stream analysis, together with closed-caption and speech recognition derived text transcripts, to aid retrieval of whole programmes and of segments within them. We report on the design of two prototypes. The first employs speech recognition to generate transcripts for indexing of radio and television news broadcasts. The second system entitled AT&TV uses closed-caption transcripts where available, to index a much wider range of programmes. A centralised archive is maintained of the past seven days television across four terrestrial channels, thus removing a viewer's need to select programmes prior to broadcast. The system delivers video-on-demand to clients with broadband access and is in regular use in a lab-wide deployment with around 50 users.
Cardinal directions: a comparison of direction relation matrix and objects interaction matrix

How to express and reason with cardinal directions between extended objects such as lines and regions is an important problem in qualitative spatial reasoning (QSR), a common subfield of geographical information science and Artificial Intelligence (AI). The direction relation matrix (DRM) model, proposed by Goyal and Egenhofer in 1997, is one very expressive relation model for this purpose. Unlike many other relation models in QSR, the set-theoretic converse of a DRM relation is not necessarily representable in DRM. Schneider et al. regard this as a serious shortcoming and propose, in their work published in ACM TODS (2012), the objects interaction matrix (OIM) model for modelling cardinal directions between complex regions. OIM is also a tiling-based model that consists of two phases: the tiling phase and the interpretation phase. Although it was claimed that OIM is a novel concept, we show that it is not so different from DRM if we represent the cardinal direction of two regions a and b by both the DRM of a to b and that of b to a. Under this natural assumption, we give methods for computing DRMs from OIMs and vice versa, and show that OIM is almost the same as DRM in the tiling phase, and becomes less precise after interpretation. Furthermore, exploiting the similarity between the two models, we prove that the consistency of a complete basic OIM network can be decided in cubic time. This answers an open problem raised by Schneider et al. regarding efficient algorithms for reasoning with OIM.
Definite integration and summation are # P-hard Leonid Gurvits

We show that the common symbolic manipulation tasks of computing multiple partial derivatives, definite integration, and definite summation, are #P-hard, i.e., at least as hard as counting the accepting input strings for any Turing machine that halts in polynomial time. (The “multiple partial derivatives” part was previously known.)
Fast Parallel Iterative Solution of Poisson's and the Biharmonic Equations on Irregular Regions

In [SIAM J. Numer. Anal. , 21 (1984), pp. 285–299], a method was introduced for solving Poisson’s or the biharmonic equation on an irregular region by making use of an integral equation formulation. Because fast solvers were used to extend the solution to an enclosing rectangle, this method avoided many of the standard problems associated with integral equations. The equations that arose were Fredholm integral equations of the second kind with bounded kernels. In this paper iterative methods are used to solve the dense nonsymmetric linear systems arising from the integral equations. Because the matrices are very well conditioned, conjugate gradient-like methods can be used and will converge very rapidly. The methods are very amenable to vectorization and parallelization, and parallel and vector implementations are described on shared memory multiprocessors. Numerical experiments are described and results presented for a three-dimensional interface problem for the Laplacian on a recording head geometry.
A multi agent controller for a mobile arm manipulator

In the assistive robotics domain, and especially for disable people, the use of mobile arm manipulator can be of a great help in the everyday life tasks. First, these systems must be reliable and fault tolerant. Secondly they must facilitate man machine co-operation. This article exposes a method based on multi agent system. This kind of distributed architecture makes possible to be fault-tolerant without any specific fault management, and thus to improve reliability. It is also possible to add specific constraints, for example human like behaviors in order to facilitate the use of the system by the operator. Moreover, this method is
Evaluating the use of laser processing and polishing techniques to generate micro-patterned surfaces for controlling fibroblast cell behaviour

The aim of this thesis was to develop novel micro and nano polymer substrates through different surface patterning techniques to compare their effect on human lung fibroblast (LL24) and bovine aorta endothelium (BAE-1) cell behaviours. The cells ability to adhere, proliferate and migrate were studied through the use of MTT assays and live cell tracking. Laser processing in a directional manner resulted in polyurethane surfaces having a ploughed field effect with micron-scale features a novel surface. In contrast, abrasive polishing in a directional and random manner resulted in polyurethane surfaces having sub-micron scale features orientated in a linear or random manner. The cell results showed that for both the LL24 and BAE-1 cells the laser and randomly organised abrasive surface prompted cell adhesion when compared to the linear polished surface and non-patterned surfaces. The linear polished features did not enhance cell proliferation for wither cell type when compared to the flat surface. For cell migration a clear difference can be seen between the cell types with the LL24 cells showing a decrease in cell migration on the laser and random abrasive surface. The BAE-1 cells showed enhanced migration on the non-patterned surface when compared to the other surfaces. This work was expanded to include different polished surfaces through the use of different grades of polishing paper. The results for the LL24 cells showed that though the polished surfaces promoted adhesion when compared to the non-patterned surface there was no clear difference between the surfaces for cell proliferation and migration. The BAE-1 cells results showed a similarity to the LL24 cells with the polished surfaces promoting adhesion when compared to the non-patterned surface. There was a clear distinction for the proliferation results with the LL24 cells showing enhanced proliferation on the scratched surface, this is in contrast to the BAE-1 cells which were enhanced on the non-patterned surfaces compared to the scratched surfaces. A final study was performed to introduce the use of machine grinding to generate surfaces with micro-sized features and their ability to affect cell behaviour. Results are presented which show that polyurethane castings of the ground surfaces can promote LL24 cell adhesion and migration, demonstrating that this method can be a cost effective technique to be used in this field.
Mobile robot control based on fuzzy behavior and robot safety body in unknown environment

Robotics Institute, Department ofMechanical Engineering Harbin Institute ofTechnology Harbin, Heilongiiang Province, 150001, P. R. China xhychina@hit.edu. cn Abstract Based on the analysis of unknown environment for mobile robot, a robot safety body, sensing body and logic body are put forward with the robot physical body together. An open fuzzy behavior-based control architecture is then proposed on the basis of robot safety body for mobile robots in complex and unstructured environments. Many sensors in various kinds are used to localize and navigate with fuzzification on target information, obstacle information and local terrain. Finally lots experiments of our mobile robot are carried out in many kinds of man-made complex environments, and the control architecture and the robot safety body with our robot is proved valid, which give a solid support for our further research for mobile robot in unknown environments.
Structural Maturation of HIV-1 Reverse Transcriptase—A Metamorphic Solution to Genomic Instability

Human immunodeficiency virus 1 (HIV-1) reverse transcriptase (RT)—a critical enzyme of the viral life cycle—undergoes a complex maturation process, required so that a pair of p66 precursor proteins can develop conformationally along different pathways, one evolving to form active polymerase and ribonuclease H (RH) domains, while the second forms a non-functional polymerase and a proteolyzed RH domain. These parallel maturation pathways rely on the structural ambiguity of a metamorphic polymerase domain, for which the sequence–structure relationship is not unique. Recent nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) studies utilizing selective labeling techniques, and structural characterization of the p66 monomer precursor have provided important insights into the details of this maturation pathway, revealing many aspects of the three major steps involved: (1) domain rearrangement; (2) dimerization; and (3) subunit-selective RH domain proteolysis. This review summarizes the major structural changes that occur during the maturation process. We also highlight how mutations, often viewed within the context of the mature RT heterodimer, can exert a major influence on maturation and dimerization. It is further suggested that several steps in the RT maturation pathway may provide attractive targets for drug development.
Cantor meets Scott: Domain-Theoretic Foundations for Probabilistic Network Programming

ProbNetKAT is a probabilistic extension of NetKAT with a denotational semantics based on Markov kernels. The language is expressive enough to generate continuous distributions, which raises the question of how to effectively compute in the language. This paper gives an alternative characterization of ProbNetKAT's semantics using domain theory, which provides the foundations needed to build a practical implementation. The new semantics demonstrates that it is possible to analyze ProbNetKAT programs precisely using approximations of fixpoints and distributions with finite support. We develop an implementation and show how to solve a variety of practical problems including characterizing the expected performance of traffic engineering schemes based on randomized routing and reasoning probabilistically about properties such as loop freedom.
Influence of immediate loading on provisional restoration in dental implant stability

The success of dental implant treatment is determined by the primary stability at placement. One factor that could influence this stability is occlusal loading through provisional restoration. Two types of loading protocols are usually used: immediate and delayed loading. However, some controversies remain about the influence of occlusal loading on implant stability. Therefore, the influence of immediate loading on implant stability must be studied. An animal study was conducted by placing nine dental implants in the mandibular jaw of three Macaca fascicularis. Provisional restorations with various occlusal contacts (no, light, and normal contact) were placed on the implant. The implant stability was measured using the Ostell ISQ three times: immediately (baseline) and at the first and second months after implant placement. The implant stability between implants with no and normal occlusal contact as well as light and normal occlusal contact showed significant differences (p < 0.05) at the first and second months after implant placement. However, no significant increase (p > 0.05) in implant stability was seen at the baseline and the first and second months after implant placement for all occlusal contact groups. Immediate loading influenced the implant stability, and provisional restoration of implant without occlusal contact showed the highest implant stability.
Oxytocin regulates changes of extracellular glutamate and GABA levels induced by methamphetamine in the mouse brain

Oxytocin (OT), a neurohypophyseal neuropeptide, affects adaptive processes of the central nervous system. In the present study, we investigated the effects of OT on extracellular levels of glutamate (Glu) and γ‐aminobutyric acid (GABA) induced by methamphetamine (MAP) in the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) and dorsal hippocampus (DHC) of freely moving mice, using in vivo microdialysis coupled to high‐performance liquid chromatography and fluorescence detection. The results showed that OT had no effect on basal Glu levels, but attenuated MAP‐induced Glu increase in the mPFC and decrease in the DHC. OT increased the basal levels of extracellular GABA in mPFC and DHC of mice, and inhibited the MAP‐induced GABA decrease in DHC. Western blot results indicated that OT significantly inhibited the increased glutamatergic receptor (NR1 subunit) levels in the PFC after acute MAP administration, whereas OT further enhanced the elevated levels of glutamatergic transporter (GLT1) induced by MAP in the hippocampus of mice. Atosiban, a selective inhibitor of OT receptor, antagonized the effects of OT. The results provided the first neurochemical evidence that OT, which exerted its action via its receptor, decreased Glu release induced by MAP, and attenuated the changes in glutamatergic neurotransmission partially via regulation of NR1 and GLT1 expression. OT‐induced extracellular GABA increase also suggests that OT acts potentially as an inhibitory neuromodulator in mPFC and DHC of mice.
XGraphtics CLUS : Web Mining Hyperlinks and Content of Terrorism websites for Homeland Security

------------------------------------------------------------------ ABSTRACT -------------------------------------------------------------- World Wide Web has become one of the best and fast communication media and information could be distributed within few seconds to the world day by day. The evolution of social networking media increases it further more to transfer information in a rapid speed to common people. Terrorism organizations utilize these facets of the web in very efficient manner for their destructive plans. Understanding web data is a decisive task to assure the better perceptive of a website. This paper focuses on the content and link structure mining of the website which was suspicious through XGraphtics CLUS . This is done through viewing the web as graph and retrieving the various content of the website. This could help in terms of better understanding the motto and various other web connections in the suspicion. The navigational links offered in the particular website could leave with some informative evidence. This paper puts a step towards the national security and provides the user a good perception.
Wif-1 is expressed at cartilage-mesenchyme interfaces and impedes Wnt3a-mediated inhibition of chondrogenesis

Wnt factors are involved in the regulation of all steps of cartilage development. The activity of Wnt factors is generally regulated at the extracellular level by factors like the Dkk family, sFRPs, Cerberus and Wnt inhibitory factor 1 (Wif-1). Here we report that Wif-1 is highly expressed at cartilage-mesenchyme interfaces of the early developing skeleton. In fetal and postnatal skeletal development, Wif-1 is expressed in a sharply restricted zone in the upper hyaline layer of epiphyseal and articular cartilage and in trabecular bone. Coimmunoprecipitation and pull-down assays using recombinant Wif-1 and Wnt factors show specific binding of Wif-1 to Wnt3a, Wnt4, Wnt5a, Wnt7a, Wnt9a and Wnt11. Moreover, Wif-1 was able to block Wnt3a-mediated activation of the canonical Wnt signalling pathway. Consequently, Wif-1 impaired growth of mesenchymal precursor cells and neutralised Wnt3a-mediated inhibition of chondrogenesis in micromass cultures of embryonic chick limb-bud cells. These results identify Wif-1 as a novel extracellular Wnt modulator in cartilage biology.
Systemic gut microbial modulation of bile acid metabolism in host tissue compartments

We elucidate the detailed effects of gut microbial depletion on the bile acid sub-metabolome of multiple body compartments (liver, kidney, heart, and blood plasma) in rats. We use a targeted ultra-performance liquid chromatography with time of flight mass-spectrometry assay to characterize the differential primary and secondary bile acid profiles in each tissue and show a major increase in the proportion of taurine-conjugated bile acids in germ-free (GF) and antibiotic (streptomycin/penicillin)-treated rats. Although conjugated bile acids dominate the hepatic profile (97.0 ± 1.5%) of conventional animals, unconjugated bile acids comprise the largest proportion of the total measured bile acid profile in kidney (60.0 ± 10.4%) and heart (53.0 ± 18.5%) tissues. In contrast, in the GF animal, taurine-conjugated bile acids (especially taurocholic acid and tauro-β-muricholic acid) dominated the bile acid profiles (liver: 96.0 ± 14.5%; kidney: 96 ± 1%; heart: 93 ± 1%; plasma: 93.0 ± 2.3%), with unconjugated and glycine-conjugated species representing a small proportion of the profile. Higher free taurine levels were found in GF livers compared with the conventional liver (5.1-fold; P < 0.001). Bile acid diversity was also lower in GF and antibiotic-treated tissues compared with conventional animals. Because bile acids perform important signaling functions, it is clear that these chemical communication networks are strongly influenced by microbial activities or modulation, as evidenced by farnesoid X receptor-regulated pathway transcripts. The presence of specific microbial bile acid co-metabolite patterns in peripheral tissues (including heart and kidney) implies a broader signaling role for these compounds and emphasizes the extent of symbiotic microbial influences in mammalian homeostasis.
Using incentives to increase availability in a DHT

Distributed hash tables (DHTs) provide a means to build a completely decentralized, large-scale persistent storage service from the individual storage capacities contributed by each node of the peer-to-peer overlay. However, persistence can only be achieved if nodes are highly available, that is, if they stay most of the time connected to the overlay. In this paper we present an incentives-based mechanism to increase the availability of DHT nodes, thereby providing better data persistence for DHT users. High availability increases a node's reputation, which translates into access to more DHT resources and a better quality-of-service. The mechanism required for tracking a node's reputation is completely decentralized, and is based on certificates reporting a node's availability which are generated and signed by the node's neighbors. An audit mechanism deters collusive neighbors from generating fake certificates to take advantage of the system.