Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Reversible cerebral vasoconstriction syndrome in the context of recent cerebral venous thrombosis: Report of a case

Introduction Reversible cerebral constriction syndrome and cerebral venous thrombosis are two rare conditions. Reversible cerebral constriction syndrome affects the cerebral arteries and the pathology is still largely unknown. To date, no physiological link with cerebral venous thrombosis has been reported. Case results We report here the case of a 24-year-old woman who presented a reversible cerebral constriction syndrome in the setting of a cerebral venous thrombosis. Cerebral venous thrombosis had developed in her left lateral venous sinus, within the stent placed one year before, in order to treat an idiopathic intracranial hypertension. Discussion The co-occurrence of cerebral venous thrombosis and reversible cerebral constriction syndrome in the same patient raises the issue of a potential link between them. We discuss the potential common trigger factors in this case: recent hormonal therapy; intracranial hypotension iatrogenically induced by lumbar puncture.
HPC System Lifetime Story: Workload Characterization and Evolutionary Analyses on NERSC Systems

High performance computing centers have traditionally served monolithic MPI applications. However, in recent years, many of the large scientific computations have included high throughput and data-intensive jobs. HPC systems have mostly used batch queue schedulers to schedule these workloads on appropriate resources. There is a need to understand future scheduling scenarios that can support the diverse scientific workloads in HPC centers. In this paper, we analyze the workloads on two systems (Hopper, Carver) at the National Energy Research Scientific Computing (NERSC) Center. Specifically, we present a trend analysis towards understanding the evolution of the workload over the lifetime of the two systems.
Forming of tailored thermoplastic composite blanks: material characterisation, simulation and validation

The early detection of defects induced by thermoforming processes is crucial for quality and cost purposes. In this work, macroscopic Finite Element simulation models able to anticipate their occurrence are developed. Simulation input parameters are determined by characterising a thermoplastic composite tape and a polyimide film under environmental forming conditions. The ability of the models to predict preform geometries, external fibre orientations and the location of critical areas is demonstrated for three tailored blanks.
Trends in Meningococcal Disease in the United States Military, 1971–2010

When you consider the risks undertaken by US military personnel, do you include risk for disease? Public health officials do. Military personnel are at risk for infectious disease because of crowding, the rigors of physical training, and sometimes unhygienic field conditions. Meningococcal disease (usually manifested as bacterial meningitis or blood-borne infection) can be rapidly fatal. It has historically affected the military more than the general US population. One hundred years' worth of data support this trend from as long ago as World War I. However, in 1970, a policy requiring vaccination of military recruits started lowering the rate of infection, although the rate remained higher than that for the general population. Since 1982, improvements in vaccines have lowered rates even further. As a result of these vaccination efforts, the meningococcal disease rate among military personnel has reached a historic low, which now matches that of the general population.
FireVolleyball: multi-player interactive game providing a sense of touching fire

This paper describes a novel game system which provides multiple players with a sense of touching fire with their own hands. Players in this game are divided into two teams in front of a wall-type flat display and try to score points by grounding a fireball on the other team's court like volleyball. The players can recognize their contacts with the fireball from mirrored image of their own appearance and the superimposed fireball in the display. Computer detects those contacts by using a real-time time-of-flight camera and renders flame of the fireball based on fluid simulation. The reason why we choose fire as a ball is that several characteristics of fire are advantages in interactions between users and virtual objects. This game can provide players with enough enjoyment and reality due to these advantages even if the implemented human detection algorithm is quite simple.
Knowledge Sharing through Communities of Practice : Exploring the cross-cultural interface

While communities of practice are often situated within culturally complex organisations, it is still relatively unclear what kinds of challenges arise, when knowledge is shared at cross-cultural interfaces. This paper explores the topic of knowledge sharing through communities of practice with a specific focus on the intersections between multiple intra-organisational cultures. Guided by a social constructivist epistemology and Foucauldian discourse theory, the findings suggest that we should pay more attention to the social practices by which knowledge becomes legitimated. It is argued that, rather than focusing too narrowly on the cognitive processes of individuals, the study of knowledge sharing should be located within a broader socio-cultural framework. 1 Helena Heizmann Address: Unit 13, 19-25 Queen Street, Newtown NSW 2042, Australia; Phone: 0061432929442; Email: hellenord@gmx.de
Aggressiveness and Reproduction of Four Meloidogyne arenaria Populations on Soybean.

Aggressiveness and reproduction differed among four geographical populations of M. arenaria on six soybean cultivars in field microplots. These differences were consistent over 3 years. The populations did not differ in virulence; i.e., population by cultivar interactions were not significant. Perineal pattern morphology, the North Carolina differential host test, chromosome counts of immature oocytes, and esterase phenotypes confirmed that the four populations were M. arenaria. Three populations were host race 2 and one population was host race 1.
Optical flow-based probabilistic tracking

In this paper, we present an observation model to track objects using particle filter algorithms based on matching techniques for computing optical flow. Although optical flow information enables us to know the displacement of objects present in a scene, it cannot be used directly to displace an object model since flow calculation techniques lack the necessary precision. In view of the fact that probabilistic tracking algorithms enable imprecise or incomplete information to be handled naturally, this model is used as a natural means of incorporating flow information into the tracking.
Bayesian algorithmic mechanism design

This article surveys recent work with an algorithmic flavor in Bayesian mechanism design. Bayesian mechanism design involves optimization in economic settings where the designer possesses some stochastic information about the input. Recent years have witnessed huge advances in our knowledge and understanding of algorithmic techniques for Bayesian mechanism design problems. These include, for example, revenue maximization in settings where buyers have multi-dimensional preferences, optimization of non-linear objectives such as makespan, and generic reductions from mechanism design to algorithm design. However, a number of tantalizing questions remain un-solved. This article is meant to serve as an introduction to Bayesian mechanism design for a novice, as well as a starting point for a broader literature search for an experienced researcher.
Interaction of the adeno-associated virus Rep protein with a sequence within the A palindrome of the viral terminal repeat

We have characterized a Rep binding sequence which is within the A stem region of the adeno-associated virus terminal repeat (TR) and compared its affinity with that of the complete hairpinned TR for pure Rep68. Both the A stem and the complete TR substrates produced a complex pattern of protein-DNA complexes in which at least six different bound species could be distinguished. Competition experiments suggested that the dissociation constant for the A stem sequence is approximately 125-fold higher than that for the complete TR. The competition experiments also suggested that the average number of Rep molecules per TR substrate molecule under conditions of saturating substrate is 3.7:1, while for the A stem substrate, the ratio is 10:1. In spite of the apparent difference in protein-to-DNA ratio in the complexes, no major difference was seen in the mobility or the pattern of the protein-DNA complexes with the two kinds of substrates, suggesting that the difference in protein-to-DNA ratio was due to the lower stability of the A stem complex rather than the actual number of Rep molecules per DNA molecule. At least some of the difference in stability of the two kinds of complexes was due to the fact that the dissociation rate of the A stem substrate from the protein-DNA complexes was approximately fourfold faster than that of the complete TR. The dissociation rate curves for both substrates, however, were complex, suggesting that substrate was being released from at least two different kinds of protein-DNA complexes at different rates. In addition, we have analyzed binding to several substitution mutants within the A stem of the TR. A five-base mutant near the terminal resolution site (trs site) had little effect on binding. Two other mutants produced seven- or five-base substitutions within the 25-bp sequence of the A stem that had been identified in the accompanying report (D. M. McCarty, D. J. Pereira, I. Zolotukhin, X. Zhou, J. H. Ryan, and N. Muzyczka, J. Virol. 68:4988-4997, 1994) as essential for binding. Each of these mutants eliminated some but not all of the repeating GAGC motifs in the 25-bp A stem region. Both of these mutants completely abolished binding to the A stem substrate but only partially reduced binding in the context of the complete hairpinned TR. Furthermore, neither mutant altered the pattern of Rep-DNA complexes produced. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)
Multiplex qPCR for Detection and Absolute Quantification of Malaria

We describe development of an absolute multiplex quantitative real-time PCR for detection of Plasmodium spp. , P. falciparum and P. vivax targets in order to produce an assay amenable to high throughput but with reduced costs. Important qPCR experimental details and information that is critical to performance and reliability of assay results were investigated. Inhibition studies were performed to test and compare co-purification of PCR inhibitors in samples extracted from whole blood using either the manual or automated methods. To establish the most optimal qPCR reaction volume, volume titration of the reaction master mix was performed starting at 10 µl to 1 µl reaction master mix with 1 µl of template DNA in each reaction. As the reaction volume decreased, qPCR assays became more efficient with 1 µl reaction master mix being the most efficient. For more accurate quantification of parasites in a sample, we developed plasmid DNAs for all the three assay targets for absolute quantification. All of absolute qPCR assays performed with efficiency of more than 94%, R2 values greater than 0.99 and the STDEV of each replicate was <0.167. Linear regression plots generated from absolute qPCR assays were used to estimate the corresponding parasite density from relative qPCR in terms of parasite/µl. One copy of plasmid DNA was established to be equivalent to 0.1 parasite/µl for Plasmodium spp. assay, 0.281 parasites for P. falciparum assay and 0.127 parasite/µl for P. vivax assay. This study demonstrates for the first time use of plasmid DNA in absolute quantification of malaria parasite. The use of plasmid DNA standard in quantification of malaria parasite will be critical as efforts are underway to harmonize molecular assays used in diagnosis of malaria.
Health guidelines for the use of wastewater in agriculture and aquaculture. Report of a WHO Scientific Group.

Issues revised technical and practical guidelines for the use of wastewater in agricultural irrigation, greenspace watering, and fish production in accordance with measures that protect the environment and safeguard against the transmission of disease. Representing the consensus reached by an international group of experts, the book introduces an approach to wastewater use that is at once less restrictive than previous guidelines and more realistic in terms of documented risks to health. Throughout, an effort is made to give water resource managers the evidence, quality indicators, and technical advice needed to exploit this valuable resource without  
Assessment of Oral Fluid HIV Test Performance in an HIV Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis Trial in Bangkok, Thailand

Background Rapid easy-to-use HIV tests offer opportunities to increase HIV testing among populations at risk of infection. We used the OraQuick Rapid HIV-1/2 antibody test (OraQuick) in the Bangkok Tenofovir Study, an HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis trial among people who inject drugs. Methods The Bangkok Tenofovir Study was a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial. We tested participants’ oral fluid for HIV using OraQuick monthly and blood using a nucleic-acid amplification test (NAAT) every 3 months. We used Kaplan-Meier methods to estimate the duration from a positive HIV NAAT until the mid-point between the last non-reactive and first reactive oral fluid test and proportional hazards to examine factors associated with the time until the test was reactive. Results We screened 3678 people for HIV using OraQuick. Among 447 with reactive results, 436 (97.5%) were confirmed HIV-infected, 10 (2.2%) HIV-uninfected, and one (0.2%) had indeterminate results. Two participants with non-reactive OraQuick results were, in fact, HIV-infected at screening yielding 99.5% sensitivity, 99.7% specificity, a 97.8% positive predictive value, and a 99.9% negative predictive value. Participants receiving tenofovir took longer to develop a reactive OraQuick (191.8 days) than participants receiving placebo (16.8 days) (p = 0.02) and participants infected with HIV CRF01_AE developed a reactive OraQuick earlier than participants infected with other subtypes (p = 0.04). Discussion The oral fluid HIV test performed well at screening, suggesting it can be used when rapid results and non-invasive tools are preferred. However, participants receiving tenofovir took longer to develop a reactive oral fluid test result than those receiving placebo. Thus, among people using pre-exposure prophylaxis, a blood-based HIV test may be an appropriate choice. Trial Registration ClinicalTrials.gov NCT00119106.
Tailor knowledge graph for query understanding: linking intent topics by propagation

Knowledge graphs are recently used for enriching query representations in an entity-aware way for the rich facts organized around entities in it. However, few of the methods pay attention to non-entity words and clicked websites in queries, which also help conveying user intent. In this paper, we tackle the problem of intent understanding with innovatively representing entity words, refiners and clicked urls as intent topics in a unified knowledge graph based framework, in a way to exploit and expand knowledge graph which we call ‘tailor’. We collaboratively exploit global knowledge in knowledge graphs and local contexts in query log to initialize intent representation, then propagate the enriched features in a graph consisting of intent topics using an unsupervised algorithm. The experiments prove intent topics with knowledge graph enriched features significantly enhance intent understanding.
Modification of Macrophage Adhesion by Ozone : Role of Cytokines and Cell Adhesion Molecules a

The inflammatory response in the lungs following an inhalation exposure of animals and humans to ozone (O3) is associated with macrophage stimulation, release of chemotactic agents, and neutrophilia. This study investigated the adhesive behavior of the alveolar macrophages and its relevance to the inflammatory processes in the lung. Macrophages recovered by BAL from rats exposed to purified air or 0.8 ppm O3 were studied in vitro for their adhesion to epithelial cells derived from ARL-14. The macrophages from O3-exposed animals displayed greater adhesion to the epithelial cells than the macrophages from control rats exposed to purified air. The O3-induced adhesion was attenuated in the macrophages treated with a combination of interleukin-1 alpha and tumor necrosis factor-alpha antibodies (anti-IL-1+anti-TNF). The cell adhesion stimulated by O3 exposure was also attenuated when the macrophages were incubated in the presence of antibodies to leukocyte adhesion molecules, CD11b, or epithelial cell adhesion molecules, ICAM-1. A marginal increase in the surface expression of CD11b was noticed in macrophages from the rats exposed to O3. A similar change in the ICAM-1 expression was, however, not observed. The results suggest that the O3-induced modifications of macrophages are mediated by IL-1 and TNF, and that these modifications are accompanied by a minimal change in the expression of the cell-adhesion molecules.
Automatically Generating Test Cases for Specification Mining

Dynamic specification mining observes program executions to infer models of normal program behavior. What makes us believe that we have seen sufficiently many executions? The TAUTOKO (“Tautoko” is the Mãori word for “enhance, enrich.”) typestate miner generates test cases that cover previously unobserved behavior, systematically extending the execution space, and enriching the specification. To our knowledge, this is the first combination of systematic test case generation and typestate mining-a combination with clear benefits: On a sample of 800 defects seeded into six Java subjects, a static typestate verifier fed with enriched models would report significantly more true positives and significantly fewer false positives than the initial models.
Frequency Doubling Technology vs Standard Automated Perimetry in Ocular Hypertensive Patients

Background: Frequency doubling technology (FDT) perimetry measures contrast sensitivity. The magnocellular component of ganglion cells in human retina is isolated as a whole by the FDT stimulus. The aim of this study is to investigate the role of Humphrey Matrix threshold testing in the detection of early functional retinal impairment in ocular hypertensive patients compared to standard automated perimetry (SAP). Methodology: Forty hypertensive patients were enrolled in this longitudinal observational clinical study. Functional testing included randomly Humphrey Matrix perimetry and white-on-white Humphrey visual field perimetry. Ibopamine test was performed in all forty patients. The cut-off of 3 mmHg was considered positive for this provocative test. Results: Out of 40 patients, we included 21 in ibopamine positive group and 19 in ibopamine negative group. These two groups are sex- and age-matched. In ibopamine positive group the mean increase in IOP is 4.6 mmHg (ranging from 3 to 10 mmHg). Statistics showed that correlation between FDT and SAP was statistically significant in ibopamine negative group and not statistically significant in ibopamine positive group. Only one patient, coming from IBO + group, converted from ocular hypertension to glaucoma. All the other subjects remained stable in both groups without any therapy and visual field abnormalities. Conclusions: FDT showed to be more sensitive and specific than SAP mostly in detection of early visual field impairment in ocular hypertensive patients.
LBD29 regulates the cell cycle progression in response to auxin during lateral root formation in Arabidopsis thaliana.

BACKGROUND AND AIMS LATERAL ORGAN BOUNDARIES DOMAIN 29 (LBD29), an important molecule downstream of auxin response factors ARF7 and ARF19, has a critical role in lateral root formation in Arabidopsis thaliana. The cell cycle activation of pericycle cells and their speciﬁcation triggered by auxin are crucial for the initiation of lateral roots. In this study, we attempted to determine whether LBD29 is involved in auxin signalling and/or cell cycle regulation and to characterize the roles of LBD29 in these processes. METHODS The impact of LBD29 on cell cycling progression in pericycle cells was investigated in lbd29 loss-of-function mutant or LBD29-over-expressing plants. The cell cycle was determined by measuring the expression of some cell cycle-related genes using in situ hybridization and quantitative real-time reverse transcription-PCR (qRT-PCR). Furthermore, the cell division in the root explants from either the lbd29 mutant, LBD29-over-expressing plants or the wild type grown in auxin-rich media was also analysed and compared by the distribution of DR5:β-glucuronidase (GUS) in the primordia or by the expression of PIN-FORMED (PIN) members and PLETHROA 1 (PLT1) which represented the auxin response by the pericycle cells. KEY RESULTS lbd29 mutation resulted in reduced numbers of lateral roots and primordia, whereas LBD29 over-expression resulted in more lateral root and primordia formation than in the wild type. More importantly, the level of LBD29 expression was found to be positively correlated with the level of expression of cell cycle-related genes and correlated with the numbers of subcellular organelles found in pericycle cells in the maturation zone. In addition, an in vitro experiment using root explants demonstrated that the presence of LBD29 was required for the maintenance of the cell division capacity of the pericycle. Furthermore, LBD29 appeared to modify PIN-dependent auxin signalling in the primordia since there was a correlated association between the expression of PINs, PLT1 and DR5:GUS and the expression of LBD29. CONCLUSIONS The ability of LBD29 to regulate lateral root initiation is associated with its maintenance of the cell division capacity of the pericycle in response to auxin and its involvement in the auxin signalling pathway.
Strategic Incentives When Supplying to Rivals

We consider an unregulated, vertically integrated input monopolist that supplies to a differentiated downstream rival. With linear input pricing, the integrated firm unambiguously wants to induce expansion by the rivalNthe opposite incentive from that in standard oligopoly settings with no supply relationship, even though the downstream competition effect is still present here. This result holds whether downstream competition involves prices or quantities and strategic substitutes or complements. If the firm charges a two-part tariff for the input, the result continues to hold under Bertrand competition in the OnormalO case of prices as strategic complements, but is reversed for Cournot and strategic substitutes. We analyze one mechanism for influencing the independent downstream firm, vertical delegation, whereby the integrated firm charges its downstream unit an observable input price, and the downstream unit does not treat that price as a pure internal transfer. Vertical delegation is shown to dominate centralized behavior by the integrated firm, and we characterize how the input price should be set in order to alter the independent firmOs choice depending on the specifics of downstream competition.
The Effects of 401(K) Participation on the Wealth Distribution: An Instrumental Quantile Regression Analysis

We use instrumental quantile regression approach to examine the effects of 401(k) plans on wealth using data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation. Using 401(k) eligibility as an instrument for 401(k) participation, we estimate the quantile treatment effects of participation in a 401(k) plan on several measures of wealth. The results show the effects of 401(k) participation on net financial assets are positive and significant over the entire range of the asset distribution, and that the increase in the low tail of the assets distribution appears to translate completely into an increase in wealth. However, there is significant evidence of substitution from other forms of wealth in the upper tail of the distribution.