Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Transcriptional activity and mutational analysis of recombinant vesicular stomatitis virus RNA polymerase

The 241-kDa large (L) protein of vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV) is the multifunctional catalytic component of the viral RNA polymerase. A protocol has been developed for the synthesis of recombinant L protein that will support viral mRNA synthesis in vitro. COS cells were transfected with a transient expression vector (pSV-VSL1 [M. Schubert, G. G. Harmison, C. D. Richardson, and E. Meier, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 82:7984-7988, 1985]) which contains the simian virus 40 late promoter for the transcription of a cDNA copy of the L protein of the Indiana serotype of VSV. Cytoplasmic extracts of these cells efficiently transcribed VSV mRNAs in vitro in conjunction with N protein-RNA template purified from virus and recombinant phosphoprotein synthesized in Escherichia coli. mRNA synthesis was completely dependent upon addition of both bacterial phosphoprotein and extracts from cells transfected with the L gene. Extracts from mock-transfected cells or from cells transfected with the expression vector alone did not support VSV RNA synthesis. RNA synthesis was proportional to the concentration of cell extract used, with an optimum of 0.2 mg/ml. Rhabdoviruses and paramyxoviruses contain a highly conserved GDNQ motif which was mutated in the transfected L gene. All constructs with mutations within the core GDN abrogated transcriptional activity except for the mutant containing GDD, which retained 25% activity. Conserved amino acid changes outside of the core GDN and changes corresponding to other paromyxovirus and rhabdovirus L proteins retained variable transcriptional activity. These findings provide experimental evidence that the GDN of negative-strand, nonsegmented RNA viruses is a variant of the GDD motif of plus-strand RNA viruses and of the XDD motif of DNA viruses and reverse transcriptases.
Feature Selection in Life Science Classification: Metaheuristic Swarm Search

The purpose of classification in medical informatics is to predict the presence or absence of a particular disease as well as disease types from historical data. Medical data often contain irrelevant features and noise, and an appropriate subset of the significant features can improve classification accuracy. Therefore, researchers apply feature selection to identify and remove irrelevant and redundant features. The authors propose a versatile feature selection approach called Swarm Search Feature Selection (SS-FS), based on stochastic swarm intelligence. It is designed to overcome NP-hard combinatorial search problems such as the selection of an optimal feature subset from an extremely large array of features--which is not uncommon in biomedical data. SS-FS is demonstrated to be a feasible computing tool in achieving high accuracy in classification via testing with two empirical biomedical datasets. This article is part of a special issue on life sciences computing.
NG2 upregulation in the denervated rat fascia dentata following unilateral entorhinal cortex lesion

The chondroitin sulfate proteoglycan NG2 is a component of the glial scar following brain injury. Because of its growth inhibiting properties, it has been suggested to impede axonal regeneration. To study whether NG2 could also regulate axonal growth in denervated brain areas, changes in NG2 were studied in the rat fascia dentata following entorhinal deafferentation and were correlated with the post‐lesional sprouting response. Laser microdissection was employed to selectively harvest the denervated molecular layer and combined with quantitative RT‐PCR to measure changes in NG2 mRNA (6 h, 12 h, 2 days, 4 days, 7 days post‐lesion). This revealed increases of NG2 mRNA at day 2 (2.5‐fold) and day 4 (2‐fold) post‐lesion. Immunocytochemistry was used to detect changes in NG2 protein (1 days, 4 days, 7 days, 10 days, 14 days, 30 days, 6 months post‐lesion). NG2 staining was increased in the denervated outer molecular layer at day 1 post‐lesion, reached a maximum 10 days post‐lesion, and returned to control levels thereafter. Electron microscopy revealed NG2 immunoprecipitate on glial surfaces and in the extracellular matrix around neuronal profiles, indicating that NG2 is secreted following denervation. Double labeling of NG2‐immunopositive cells with markers for astrocytes, microglia/macrophages, and mature oligodendrocytes suggested that NG2 cells are a distinct glial subpopulation before and after entorhinal deafferentation. BrdU labeling revealed that some of the NG2‐positive cells are generated post‐lesion. Taken together, our data revealed a layer‐specific upregulation of NG2 in the denervated fascia dentata that coincides with the sprouting response. This suggests that NG2 could regulate lesion‐induced axonal growth in denervated areas of the brain. © 2005 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
A Review of: “Thou Art That: Transforming Religious Metaphor”

T he alliance and correspondence between religion and mythology has been, at times, downright cantankerous. Joseph Campbell’s popular and penetrating work in the fields of myth and religion offers one of the best articulations of the shared correspondence and promises shared coherence between myth and religion. Joseph Campbell delivered a lecture at a conservative Catholic institution, famous for its liberal arts curriculum, and a philosophy professor asked him: “What is myth? ” Without skipping a beat, Campbell responded: “Other people’s religion. And what is religion? Other people’s misunderstood myths. ” Campbell immediately found himself crossing the river Styx on his way to Infernal regions. The above lines are quoted in Thou Art That, a fine little gem of a book that well serves anyone grappling with the symbolic nature of religious and mythical images and experiences. The titles of the chapters outline the large narrative: Metaphor and Religious Mystery, The Experience of Religious Mystery, Our Notions of God, The Religious Imagination and the Rules of Traditional Theology, Symbols of the JudeoChristian Tradition, Understanding the Symbols of Judeo-Christian Spirituality, Question Period. The last section is a transcription of a taped discussion with Campbell on many of the book’s themes. This book is one in a series of volumes published by The Joseph Campbell Foundation, founded in 1991 to collect, collate, and publish The Collected Works of Joseph Campbell, a task appreciated by many who want to study in depth the shared common ground between religion and myth. Thou Art That offers a sophisticated short course on the nature and function of metaphor and symbol as they point one to the mystery of the transcendent—all of which, Campbell repeats often, are debunked, drained, and dissolved of their numinous power by religious institutions that focus too much
Social Capital in Korea: Relational Capital, Trust, and Transparency

This article starts by distinguishing two different types of social capital, that is, societal moral resource capital and relational capital. Social capital as a societal moral resource is best characterized in Putnam's works. Social capital as the relational mobilization of information and control is best conceptualized by Coleman. By contrasting these two aspects of social capital, and by contextualizing the peculiarity of social relations in East Asian countries, this article explores the characteristics of social capital in Korea. For that purpose, I focus on the working of relational capital, or inmaek, in the creation and reproduction of social inequality. Moreover, I calculate the macro-level transformation of Korean society in terms of the role of societal moral resources.
What's a Head Without a Body?

Concepts in Answer Set Programming (ASP) are normally defined in terms of atoms.We show that the treatment of atoms and bodies (of rules) as equitable computational objects may yield exponential speed-ups, even for standard ASP-solvers such as smodels. To this end, we give simple transformations providing solvers with access to both kinds of objects and show that some families of examples can be solved exponentially faster after they have been transformed. We prove that these transformations may yield exponentially smaller search spaces.
Hackers, Cyborgs, and Wikipedians: The Political Economy and Cultural History of Wikipedia

Victoria Smith Ekstrand, Advisor This dissertation explores the political economy and cultural history of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. It demonstrates how Wikipedia, an influential and popular site of knowledge production and distribution, was influenced by its heritage from the hacker communities of the late twentieth century. More specifically, Wikipedia was shaped by an ideal I call, “the cyborg individual,” which held that the production of knowledge was best entrusted to a widely distributed network of individual human subjects and individually owned computers. I trace how this ideal emerged from hacker culture in response to anxieties hackers experienced due to their intimate relationships with machines. I go on to demonstrate how this ideal influenced how Wikipedia was understood both those involved in the early history of the site, and those writing about it. In particular, legal scholar Yochai Benkler seems to base his understanding of Wikipedia and its strengths on the cyborg individual ideal. Having established this, I then move on to show how the cyborg individual ideal misunderstands Wikipedia’s actual method of production. Most importantly, it overlooks the importance of how the boundaries drawn around communities and shared technological resources shape Wikipedia’s content. I then proceed to begin the process of building what I believe is a better way of understanding Wikipedia, by tracing how communities and shared resources shape the production of recent Wikipedia articles.
State Legitimacy and Development in Africa. By Pierre Englebert. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2000. 243p. $55.00.

In this well-informed, theoretically and methodologically sophisticated, and highly innovative book, and in related articles that appeared recently in Political Research Quarterly (53 [March 2000]: 7-36) and World Development (28 [Octo- ber 2000]: 1821-35), Pierre Englebert proposes and tests the hypothesis that variations in vertical and horizontal state legitimacy account for variations in the developmental capac- ity and economic growth of African states and of Africa in comparison to other world regions. Developmental capacity, which combines an index of specific economic policies (em- phasizing a free market and human capital) and an index of good governance, is the crucial intervening variable between state legitimacy and growth.
Sliding mode control for voltage source converter applied to wind energy systems

This paper focuses on a sliding mode power controller (SMPC) of a three-phase grid-connected voltage source converter (VSC). The proposed control scheme aims at regulating the DC-link voltage of the converter and precisely tracking arbitrary power references, in order to easily control the system's power factor. Measures are also proposed to reduce the chattering effects inherent to SMC. Simulations performed under Matlab/Simulink validate the feasibility of the designed SMPC. Simulation results on a 1kVA grid-connected VSC under normal and faulted grid voltage conditions demonstrate good performance of the SMPC in terms of robustness, stability and precision.
Regard sociologique sur l'articulation de la vie professionnelle avec la vie familiale. Enjeu de société, médiation organisationnelle et appartenance professionnelle.

Ce cahier contient une reflexion sur les raisons qui poussent aujourd'hui le sociologue a considerer l'articulation de la vie professionnelle avec la vie familiale (APF) comme un objet d'etude digne d'interet. Synthetisant les resultats des recherches qu'il a menees depuis une dizaine d'annees sur le sujet, l'auteur propose une problematisation de cette articulation, qu'il situe au coeur des transformations sociales contemporaines. Il s'interesse ensuite aux mediations sociales que sont les espaces organisationnels et professionnels ou s'expriment concretement la rencontre et la transaction entre les evolutions globales (structurelles et culturelles), les contextes institutionnels, et les aspirations et comportements individuels. Ce faisant, il met en avant des dimensions peu prises en consideration dans la pensee et l'action publiques en la matiere, celles qui concernent les attitudes des entreprises et les appartenances professionnelles.
Negotiation, communication, and decision strategies used by hostage/crisis negotiators.

By conducting this theory-based empirical study, gathering data from working negotiators in the US and Canada, I have determined what primary dynamic activities, communication skills, and negotiation tools are used by hostage/crisis negotiators. Negotiators implement their negotiation and decision strategies differently depending on whether the situations they deal with are instrumental or expressive. I have determined which elements of negotiations and factors affecting negotiations differ while handling instrumental and expressive hostage situations. I found that the collected data did not reveal any significant relationship between handling instrumental/expressive hostage situations differently and belief in the elements of Brenda Dervin's and Shannon-Weaver's theories. I have also determined that the belief in the elements of the Dervin's and Shannon-Weaver's theories is workable and practical for negotiators to use. Based on the above findings, the model suggested by this research adds the elements and directives of Dervin's and Shannon-Weaver's models to the common approach used by the negotiators. This revised model suggests that the negotiators pay attention to the dynamics of the interactions presented between the two parties: the negotiators themselves and hostage takers. The revised model also recommends that the negotiators focus on not only the hostage takers behavioral characteristics, psychological conditions, and criminal history but also on the meaning of the sent message and the interaction itself as performed between the two parties. This perspective enables the negotiators to look at the negotiation process as information and communication process. We are not ignoring the fact that hostage negotiation is a format of extreme information management. By looking at such an extreme case, we can add to our understanding of Dervin's and Shannon-Weaver's perspectives in order to see the hostage negotiation process from a wider perspective. The revised model is not an alternative approach to the common approach most negotiators use. Instead, the revised model uses the perspective and directives of the common approach and extends its meaning and content by also focusing on Dervin's sense making theory and Shannon-Weaver's communication model perspectives. The use of the perspective of this revised model is one more tool for the negotiators to use in order to promote new ways of looking at hostage negotiation resolutions.
The Influence of Transformational Leadership Training on Team Resilience

This study evaluated the effectiveness of team transformational leadership training for enhancing the resilience in teams. The training was developed from various existing literature on the correlations between transformational leadership and team resilience. Results from 36 three-person action teams working on an intellective interdependent decision-making task revealed a significant and positive impact of the transformational leadership training on resilience, compared to teams that received no or a transactional leadership training. Transformational trained teams made a quicker recovery and showed greater resilience. Furthermore, results show that the teams’ perception of resilience, obtained via questionnaires, is positively correlated with our measurement of resilience. Also, team potency correlated positively with our measurement of recovery and resilience, as well as perceived resilience. However, no correlations were found with any measurement of resilience and psychological safety or cohesion. Post-hoc video analysis in search for team behaviors show a significant difference between training conditions on team orientation. Implications of these findings for future research and practice are discussed.
Autophagy in the placenta

Autophagy is an evolutionarily conserved catalytic process by which cytoplasmic components including damaged macromolecules and organelles are degraded. The role of autophagy includes adaptive responses to nutrition deprivation or intracellular stimuli. Although autophagosomes were first observed in early 1960s, it was 1990s that autophagy-related genes in yeast were identified and studied. Nowadays, the molecular machinery of autophagy and signaling pathway to various stimuli are almost outlined. Dysregulation of autophagic activity has been implicated in many human diseases including neurodegenerative diseases, infection and inflammation, and malignancies. However, since current understanding of autophagy in placenta is just at the beginning, this paper aims to provide general information on autophagy (part I) and to summarize articles on autophagy in human placenta (part II). This review article will serve as a basis for further researches on autophagy in relation to human pregnancy and its complications.
Emergence of Symptoms of Tourette's Syndrome during Fluvoxamine Treatment of Obsessive–Compulsive Disorder

A 14-year-old boy with obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD) developed, under fluvoxamine treatment, acute symptoms of Tourette's syndrome (TS) with aggravation of the OCD. The TS symptoms did not respond to dopamine blockers and disappeared only after withdrawal of fluvoxamine. Readministration of fluvoxamine caused a re-emergence of the same symptoms.
Preventive Discussions with Health Care Providers: Exploring Differences by Race/Ethnicity and Place

The goal of the current investigation was to explore differences in discussions of health topics with health care providers by race/ethnicity and place to identify who is receiving this preventive care and where it is being received in a low-income urban area in which people are at increased risk of chronic disease. 1,147 adults responded to a health survey in New Haven, Connecticut. Black and Latino participants reported that their health care providers discussed more topics with them than White participants reported. Participants who received care at community health centers and hospital primary care centers discussed more topics than participants who received care at hospital emergency departments and private doctors' offices. Findings suggest that community health centers are important sources of preventive care in low-income urban settings, thereby supporting the goals of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and the community health center model of care delivery.
The future’s so bright, I gotta wear sunscreen: Dispositional optimism and preferences for prioritizing health care

Priority setting in health care involves many complex social value judgments. Whereas a wide body of empirical research has emerged that describe how people make these judgments, little is known about the psychological background against which they are made. In this study, we investigate whether the character trait of dispositional optimism, i.e. anticipating a positive or negative future, influences the way people think about priority setting in health care. We do this by linking a representative sample of the Belgian population’s (N=750) responses on the Revised Life Orientation Test to their responses to a discrete choice experiment (DCE) about priority setting. We find that more pessimistic individuals are on average in worse (self-reported) health, are younger, are more likely to smoke and are less likely to have a university degree than their more optimistic counterparts. Controlling for these respondent characteristics, we find that dispositional optimism indeed matters to priority setting. “Pessimists” are less willing to invest limited resources in prevention and are less in support of prioritizing younger generations over older ones.
Treatment Algorithm of Chronic Ankle and Subtalar Instability

From 1981 to 1984, 131 reconstructive procedures and 113 Evans tenodesis procedures (1972–1984) were performed for patients with chronic instability of the ankle joint. From 1981 to 1985, 42 Christman/Snook procedures were performed for patients with isolated or combined subtalar instability. Reevaluation was conducted for 223 patients (102 reconstructive procedures, 87 Evans tenodesis procedures, and 34 Christman/Snook tenodesis procedures). The follow-up protocol comprised standard and stress radiograms, subjective patient evaluation, and objective functional data. No patient in either treatment group had clinically important ankle instability. Patients who had undergone the Evans tenodesis had a 3.3° mean less talar tilt than did patients treated with reconstructive procedure. Of 87 patients who underwent Evans tenodesis, 33 had a mean supination deficit of 7.5°. According to the ±100 points classification, 90% of the patients in both groups achieved good or excellent results. For subtalar instability, the Christman/Snook techniques resulted in a mean supination deficit of 7.2° in 20 patients. Of 34 patients, 31 were rated good or excellent.
DrugMetabolism and the Microbiome — Perspective Microbiome Disturbances and Autism Spectrum Disorders

Autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) are considered a heterogenous set of neurobehavioral diseases, with the rates of diagnosis dramatically increasing in the past few decades. As genetics alone does not explain the underlying cause in many cases, attention has turned to environmental factors as potential etiological agents. Gastrointestinal disorders are a common comorbidity in ASD patients. It was thus hypothesized that a gut-brain link may account for some autistic cases. With the characterization of the human microbiome, this concept has been expanded to include the microbiota-gut-brain axis. There are mounting reports in animal models and human epidemiologic studies linking disruptive alterations in the gut microbiota or dysbiosis and ASD symptomology. In this review, we will explore the current evidence that gut dysbiosis in animal models and ASD patients correlates with disease risk and severity. The studies to date have surveyed how gut microbiome changes may affect these neurobehavioral disorders. However, we harbor other microbiomes in the body that might impact brain function. We will consider microbial colonies residing in the oral cavity, vagina, and the most recently discovered one in the placenta. Based on the premise that gut microbiota alterations may be causative agents in ASD, several therapeutic options have been tested, such as diet modulations, prebiotics, probiotics, synbiotics, postbiotics, antibiotics, fecal transplantation, and activated charcoal. The potential benefits of these therapies will be considered. Finally, the possible mechanisms by which changes in the gut bacterial communities may result in ASD and related neurobehavioral disorders will be examined.
The Long-Term Impact of Interactive Exhibits.

Follow‐up interviews with 79 adults and children about 6 months after a visit to Launch Pad, the interactive science centre in London's Science Museum, provide evidence of a long‐term impact of the visit. Although most of the memories were episodic rather than semantic in nature, over one‐quarter of the exhibit memories elicited showed evidence of respondents having reflected on the encounter, many of them reporting that they had related their experiences to existing knowledge or to programmes they had seen on television.