Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Infant crying and maternal responsiveness.

BELL, SILVIA M. , and AINSWORTH, MARY D. SALTER. Infant Crying and Maternal Responsiveness. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1972, 43, 1171-1190. This naturalistic, longitudinal study of 26 infant-mother pairs shows that consistency and promptness of maternal response is associated with decline in frequency and duration of infant crying. By the end of the first year individual differences in crying reflect the history of maternal responsiveness rather than constitutional differences in infant irritability. Close physical contact is the most frequent maternal intervention and the most effective in terminating crying. Nevertheless, maternal effectiveness in terminating crying was found to be less powerful than promptness of response in reducing crying in subsequent months. Evidence suggests that whereas crying is expressive at first, it can later be a mode of communication directed specifically toward the mother. The development of noncrying modes of communication, as well as a decline in crying, is associated with maternal responsiveness to infant signals. The findings are discussed in an evolutionary context, and with reference to the popular belief that to respond to his cries "spoils" a baby.
Knowledge and practices of barbers about hepatitis B and C transmission in Rawalpindi and Islamabad.

OBJECTIVE To assess the knowledge and practices of barbers regarding transmission risk of HBV and HCV viruses. METHODS A cross-sectional survey of barber's shops in Rawalpindi and Islamabad was conducted during September- November1998. Barbers were queried about hepatitis, knowledge regarding hepatitis transmission through razor, vaccination, sterilization, and the form of media they use for information and entertainment. Use of instruments on at least 2 clients were observed in each shop. Proportion and their 95% confidence intervals were computed. RESULTS Of 96 barbers approached, 12 (13%) knew that hepatitis is a disease of the liver, causing jaundice, it is transmitted through parenteral route and could also be transmitted by razor. During the actual observation of 192 clients, razors were cleaned with antiseptic solution for 22 (11.4%) and reused for 88 (46%) shaves. CONCLUSION Level of awareness among barbers about hepatitis and risks of transmission is very low, and their practice of razor reuse that may spread hepatitis is very common. Messages about hepatitis need to be incorporated in media campaigns, in addition to regulation of practices.
Clinical and Molecular Epidemiology of Staphylococcus aureus Catheter-Related Bacteremia in Children

Background: Staphylococcus aureus (SA) is an important cause of catheter-related bacteremia (CRB). The USA300 clone increasingly causes healthcare associated infections. We compared children with SA-CRB due to USA300 versus non-USA300 isolates and identified risk factors for complications. Methods: Children at Texas Children's Hospital (TCH) with SA-CRB were identified from a prospective S. aureus surveillance study. S. aureus isolates were characterized by methicillin susceptibility and pulsed field gel electrophoresis. Results: From August 2001 to October 2007, 112 children with a first episode of SA-CRB and corresponding isolates were identified. USA300 accounted for 21 isolates. Metastatic infection complicated 10.7% of cases and was associated with methicillin resistance. Other complications were recurrence (n = 16), death (n = 13), thrombosis (n = 9), and intravascular “cast” (n = 6). Four patients with non-USA300 SA-CRB had endocarditis. Prolonged bacteremia was more common in methicillin-resistant SA (12/29) than in methicillin-susceptible SA SA-CRB (14/83) (P = 0.007). Complications were more common in patients with bacteremia ≥4 days (16/26 [61.5%]) versus patients with bacteremia <4 days (25/86 [29%]) (P = 0.003). The complication rate was lower in patients who had the catheter removed <4 days (22.5%) versus patients whose catheter was removed ≥4 days after infection or not removed (44.4%) (P = 0.02). Children with USA300 versus non-USA300 isolates did not differ with respect to frequency or type of complications. Conclusions: At Texas Children's Hospital, the USA300 clone caused 19% of initial SA-CRB episodes and was associated with methicillin resistance. Complications occurred in 36.6% of the patients and were associated with prolonged bacteremia and catheter removal ≥4 days after infection or failure to remove the catheter.
Observation of broken time-reversal symmetry in the heavy-fermion superconductor UPt3

Optically probed superconductor The exotic superconductor UPt3 has two superconducting phases that appear at different temperatures, but their nature remains unclear. Schemm et al. shone circularly polarized light on a crystal of UPt3 and studied its reflection (see the Perspective by van der Marel and Sawatzky). In the low-temperature phase, the pairs of electrons that make the material superconducting have a handedness to them. The finding narrows down the possible descriptions of the electron-pair wave function. Science, this issue p. 190; see also p. 138 Optical measurements elucidate the nature of superconductivity in an exotic compound. [Also see Perspective by van der Marel and Sawatzky] Models of superconductivity in unconventional materials can be experimentally differentiated by the predictions they make for the symmetries of the superconducting order parameter. In the case of the heavy-fermion superconductor UPt3, a key question is whether its multiple superconducting phases preserve or break time-reversal symmetry (TRS). We tested for asymmetry in the phase shift between left and right circularly polarized light reflected from a single crystal of UPt3 at normal incidence and found that this so-called polar Kerr effect appears only below the lower of the two zero-field superconducting transition temperatures. Our results provide evidence for broken TRS in the low-temperature superconducting phase of UPt3, implying a complex two-component order parameter for superconductivity in this system.
Myosin II Contributes to Fusion Pore Expansion during Exocytosis*

During exocytosis, the fusion pore expands to allow release of neurotransmitters and hormones to the extracellular space. To understand the process of synaptic transmission, it is of outstanding importance to know the properties of the fusion pore and how these properties affect the release process. Many proteins have been implicated in vesicle fusion; however, there is little evidence for proteins involved in fusion pore expansion. Myosin II has been shown to participate in the transport of vesicles and, surprisingly, in the final phases of exocytosis, affecting the kinetics of catecholamine release in adrenal chromaffin cells as measured by amperometry. Here, we have studied single vesicle exocytosis in chromaffin cells overexpressing an unphosphorylatable form (T18AS19A RLC-GFP) of myosin II that produces an inactive protein by patch amperometry. This method allows direct determination of fusion pore expansion by measuring its conductance, whereas the release of catecholamines is recorded simultaneously by amperometry. Here we demonstrated that the fusion pore is of critical importance to control the release of catecholamines during single vesicle secretion in chromaffin cells. We proved that myosin II acts as a molecular motor on the fusion pore expansion by hindering its dilation when it lacks the phosphorylation sites.
Registration and occlusion detection in motion blur

We address the problem of automatically detecting occluded regions given a blurred/unblurred image pair of a scene taken from different viewpoints. The occlusion can be due to single or multiple objects. We present a unified framework for detecting occluder(s) that is reasonably robust to non-uniform motion blur as well as variations in camera pose (without the need for deblurring). We assume that the occluded pixels occupy only a relatively small area and that the camera motion trajectory is sparse in the camera motion space. We validate the performance of our algorithm with experiments on synthetic and real data.
Signalling C-Type Lectins in Antimicrobial Immunity

Since it was first proposed that the innate immune system could recognise conserved microbial-associated molecular patterns (or PAMPs) through inherited receptors expressed by the host (termed pattern recognition receptors, or PRRs), several families of PRRs have been discovered and characterised. The most famous of these are the Toll-like receptors (TLRs), but there is growing appreciation that another large family of PRRs, known as the C-type lectin receptors (CLRs), also play a major role in antimicrobial immunity. CLRs have one or more carbohydrate recognition domains (CRDs) that recognise a wide variety of carbohydrate ligands. Other members of the CLR family, which do not recognise carbohydrate ligands but contain similar protein folds called C-type lectin-like domains (CTLD), have also been discovered and are included in this large family whose members are divided into 17 groups relating to phylogeny and structure. Upon ligand binding, some CLRs (such as Dectin-1, Dectin-2, and Mincle) undergo intracellular signalling to drive cellular responses. Here, we outline the signalling pathways downstream of these receptors and discuss how they, and some other CLRs (including the Mannose Receptor, CLEC5A, CLEC9A, and DC-SIGN), contribute to immunity against fungi, bacteria, viruses, and parasites.
MATRIX THEORY OF pp WAVES

The Matrix Theory that has been proposed for various pp wave backgrounds is discussed. Particular emphasis is on the existence of novel nontrivial supersymmetric solutions of the Matrix Theory. These correspond to branes of various shapes (ellipsoidal, paraboloidal, and possibly hyperboloidal) that are unexpected from previous studies of branes in pp wave geometries.
Parametric effect on dissimilar friction stir welded steel-magnesium alloys joints: a review

The joining of a strong and a light metal such as; steel and magnesium alloys (Mg alloys) is much-needed demand for reducing the weight of the vehicles and other structures in various engineering applications. This has steered to a need of an acceptable welding method for dissimilar material. The Steel-Mg alloys joining make challenges through fusion welding because of various metallurgical issues. The friction stir welding (FSW) being a solid-state welding, has been used to join dissimilar materials. This review article thoroughly highlights the influence of FSW working parameters on microstructure, mechanical properties, and associated welding defects. Finally, this effort not only sets eminent outcomes of the preceding research personnel but also proposes forthcoming guidelines for FSW of Steel-Mg alloys.
Automating presentation changes in dynamic web applications via collaborative hybrid analysis

Web applications are becoming increasingly popular nowadays. During the development and evolution of a web application, a typical type of tasks is to change the presentation of the web application, such as correcting display errors, adding user-interface controls, or changing appearance styles. To change the presentation of a static web page, developers are able to modify the HTML text of the web page using a graphical web-page editor. However, to change the presentation of a dynamic web application, instead of using a graphical web-page editor to directly modify generated web pages, developers need to modify the code that generates the web pages. As manually performing presentation changes in dynamic web applications is tedious and error-prone, we propose a novel approach based on collaborative hybrid analysis that combines static analysis and dynamic analysis to facilitate developers to perform presentation changes in dynamic web applications. Our approach includes two parts. The first part takes as input the presentation change to be performed on a generated web page (with proper runtime information), and uses dynamic string-origin analysis to locate the source-code segment that generates the changed part of the web page. The second part checks unexpected impact of directly performing the change on the source-code segment, and asks for human intervention when unexpected impact exists. We implemented our approach for the PHP language and carried out an empirical study on 39 presentation-change tasks identified from 600 bug reports of three real-world dynamic web applications (in total more than 148 KLOC). Among the 39 tasks, our approach is able to correctly locate the place to modify in each presentation-change task and correctly perform the presentation change on the source code in more than half of the tasks.
Functional Analysis of a Predicted Flavonol Synthase Gene Family in Arabidopsis1[W][OA]

The genome of Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) contains five sequences with high similarity to FLAVONOL SYNTHASE1 (AtFLS1), a previously characterized flavonol synthase gene that plays a central role in flavonoid metabolism. This apparent redundancy suggests the possibility that Arabidopsis uses multiple isoforms of FLS with different substrate specificities to mediate the production of the flavonols, quercetin and kaempferol, in a tissue-specific and inducible manner. However, biochemical and genetic analysis of the six AtFLS sequences indicates that, although several of the members are expressed, only AtFLS1 encodes a catalytically competent protein. AtFLS1 also appears to be the only member of this group that influences flavonoid levels and the root gravitropic response in seedlings under nonstressed conditions. This study showed that the other expressed AtFLS sequences have tissue- and cell type-specific promoter activities that overlap with those of AtFLS1 and encode proteins that interact with other flavonoid enzymes in yeast two-hybrid assays. Thus, it is possible that these “pseudogenes” have alternative, noncatalytic functions that have not yet been uncovered.
CLINICAL PRACTICE. Cryptogenic Stroke.

After a gym workout, a 48-year-old man had sudden ataxia, nausea, and diplopia, followed by persistent inability to see the upper left quadrant of space with either the left or right eye. He did not have neck pain. His medical history included hypertension and migraines with aura. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) showed a right occipitotemporal and thalamic infarct. Magnetic resonance angiography showed an abrupt cutoff of a distal segment of the right posterior cerebral artery. The complete blood count, prothrombin time, and partial-thromboplastin time were normal. Transthoracic echocardiographic results suggested a possible right-to-left shunt. Cardiac telemetry during the first 2 inpatient days revealed no dysrhythmias. How should this case be further evaluated?
Primary anorectal actinomycosis.

Nine cases of actinomycosis primarily involving the anorectal region have been seen at the Mayo Clinic since 1950. Complete healing may be expected once the correct diagnosis is made, on the basis of the characteristic clinical manifestations and laboratory identification of the organism, and proper antimicrobial and surgical therapy is administered. ( JAMA 228:1397-1400, 1974)
When selfish meets evil: byzantine players in a virus inoculation game

Over the last years, game theory has provided great insights into the behavior of distributed systems by modeling the players as utility-maximizing agents. In particular, it has been shown that selfishness causes many systems to perform in a globally suboptimal fashion. Such systems are said to have a large Price of Anarchy. In this paper, we extend this active field of research by allowing some players to be malicious or Byzantine rather than selfish. We ask: What is the impact of Byzantine players on the system's efficiency compared to purely selfish environments or compared to the social optimum? In particular, we introduce the Price of Malice which captures this efficiency degradation. As an example, we analyze the Price of Malice of a game which models the containment of the spread of viruses. In this game, each node can choose whether or not to install anti-virus software. Then, a virus starts from a random node and iteratively infects all neighboring nodes which are not inoculated. We establish various results about this game. For instance, we quantify how much the presence of Byzantine players can deteriorate or---in case of highly risk-averse selfish players---improve the social welfare of the distributed system.
Use of Approximate Inference in an Index of Completeness of Biological Inventories

Abstract: To assess the completeness of a floristic or faunal inventory, one may use the ratio of the observed number of species to the “true number” of species (C). If the inventory is complete, C =1. The estimate of the true number can be obtained from accumulation curves, nonparametric methods, or other techniques. We devised a simple method for computing confidence intervals (CI) for C and for evaluating the null hypothesis that the inventory is complete. The method is based on the assumptions that an estimate of the variance of the true number of species is known and that the distribution of the estimator of the true number of species is approximately normal. We applied our method to bird inventories in the Balsas Basin of Mexico. The completeness index for subtransects were lower (84.0, 85.4, and 89.9%) than for the whole transect (91.6%) (all significantly different from 100%). Thus, these particular inventories were incomplete at 2 spatial resolutions. Our method of estimating CI for C can be used to estimate species richness obtained from databases of different sites or to test the null hypothesis that an inventory derived from a database is complete.
Socioeconomic costs of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis according to staging system

Abstract The objective of this study was to compare the cost of illness of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) in the Korean population based on the staging system for ALS from the perspective of both patients and the government. Direct medical costs, care-related costs, and loss of productivity in patients with ALS were measured based on medical records and face-to-face interviews. The patients were divided into groups according to the staging system for ALS, and the cost of illness was analysed. A total of 151 patients with ALS were enrolled in the study. The mean monthly cost of ALS was US $7902 per patient and increased according to the disease stage (stage 2, US $5181; stage 3, US $7089; stage 4, US $10,557). Of direct medical costs (US $3436), 44.8% of the cost burden was carried by patients, and the remaining costs were paid by the government. In conclusion, although the current coverage rate of the National Health Insurance (NHI) system for rare and intractable diseases including ALS is 90%, the rate of direct medical costs paid by patients and out-of-pocket costs remain high. Moreover, coverage rates and cost of illness are closely related with disease severity.
Mitotic partitioning of transcription factors

Mitosis is a highly orchestrated process involving numerous protein kinases and phosphatases. At the onset of mitosis, the chromatin condensation into metaphase chromosomes is correlated with global phosphorylation of histone H3. The bulk of transcription is silenced while many of the transcription‐associated proteins, including transcription and chromatin remodeling factors, are excluded from chromatin, typically as a consequence of their phosphorylation. Components of the transcription machinery and regulatory proteins are recycled and equally partitioned between newly divided cells by mechanisms that may involve microtubules, microfilaments or intermediate filaments. However, as demonstrated in the case of Runx2, a subset of transcription factors involved in lineage‐specific control, likely remain associated with their target genes to direct the deposition or removal of epigenetic marks. The displacement and re‐entry into daughter cells of transcription and chromatin remodeling factors are temporally defined and regulated. Reformation of daughter nuclei is a critical time to re‐establish the proper gene expression pattern. The mechanisms involved in the marking and re‐establishment of gene expression has been elucidated for few genes. The elucidation of how the memory of a programmed expression profile is transmitted to daughter cells represents a challenge. J. Cell. Biochem. 105: 1–8, 2008. © 2008 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Phase Behaviour and Miscibility Studies of Collagen/Silk Fibroin Macromolecular System in Dilute Solutions and Solid State

Miscibility is an important issue in biopolymer blends for analysis of the behavior of polymer pairs through the detection of phase separation and improvement of the mechanical and physical properties of the blend. This study presents the formulation of a stable and one-phase mixture of collagen and regenerated silk fibroin (RSF), with the highest miscibility ratio between these two macromolecules, through inducing electrostatic interactions, using salt ions. For this aim, a ternary phase diagram was experimentally built for the mixtures, based on observations of phase behavior of blend solutions with various ratios. The miscibility behavior of the blend solutions in the miscible zones of the phase diagram was confirmed quantitatively by viscosimetric measurements. Assessing the effects of biopolymer mixing ratio and salt ions, before and after dialysis of blend solutions, revealed the importance of ion-specific interactions in the formation of coacervate-based materials containing collagen and RSF blends that can be used in pharmaceutical, drug delivery, and biomedical applications. Moreover, the conformational change of silk fibroin from random coil to beta sheet, in solution and in the final solid films, was detected by circular dichroism (CD) and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), respectively. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) exhibited alterations of surface morphology for the biocomposite films with different ratios. Surface contact angle measurement illustrated different hydrophobic properties for the blended film surfaces. Differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) showed that the formation of the beta sheet structure of silk fibroin enhances the thermal stability of the final blend films. Therefore, the novel method presented in this study resulted in the formation of biocomposite films whose physico-chemical properties can be tuned by silk fibroin conformational changes by applying different component mixing ratios.
A Case of Postoperative Sphingomonas paucimobilis Endophthalmitis After Cataract Extraction

Purpose To report a case of an acute onset of delayed postoperative endophthalmitis that was caused by Sphingomonas paucimobilis. Methods This case demonstrates an acute onset of delayed postoperative endophthalmitis at 3 months after uneventful cataract extraction and posterior chamber intraocular lens implantation. We performed vitrectomy, intraocular lens and capsular bag removal, and intravitreal antibiotics injection. On the smear stains from the aspirated vitreous humor, gram-negative bacilli were detected and S. paucimobilis was found in culture. Results At three months after vitrectomy, the best corrected visual acuity was 20/300. Fundus examination showed mild pale color of optic disc and macular degeneration. Conclusions Vitrectomy with intravitreal ceftazidime injection had contributed to the favorable result in case of an acute onset of delayed postoperatire endophthalmitis caused by S. paucimobilis.