Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Calvin cycle enzyme pentose-5-phosphate 3-epimerase is encoded within the cfx operons of the chemoautotroph Alcaligenes eutrophus

Several genes (cfx genes) encoding Calvin cycle enzymes in Alcaligenes eutrophus are organized in two highly homologous operons comprising at least 11 kb. One cfx operon is located on the chromosome; the other is located on megaplasmid pHG1 of the organism (B. Bowien, U. Windhövel, J.-G. Yoo, R. Bednarski, and B. Kusian, FEMS Microbiol. Rev. 87:445-450, 1990). Corresponding regions of about 2.7 kb from within the operons were sequenced. Three open reading frames, designated cfxX (954 bp), cfxY (765 bp), and cfxE (726 bp), were detected at equivalent positions in the two sequences. The nucleotide identity of the sequences amounted to 94%. Heterologous expression of the subcloned pHG1-encoded open reading frames in Escherichia coli suggested that they were functional genes. The observed sizes of the gene products CfxX (35 kDa), CfxY (27 kDa), and CfxE (25.5 kDa) closely corresponded to the values calculated on the basis of the sequence information. E. coli clones harboring the cfxE gene showed up to about 19-fold-higher activities of pentose-5-phosphate 3-epimerase (PPE; EC 5.1.3.1) than did reference clones, suggesting that cfxE encodes PPE, another Calvin cycle enzyme. These data agree with the finding that in A. eutrophus, PPE activity is significantly enhanced under autotrophic growth conditions which lead to a derepression of the cfx operons. No functions could be assigned to CfxX and CfxY.
Novel Wideband Bandpass Filter with Dual Notched Bands Using Stub-Loaded Resonators

In this letter, a novel wideband bandpass filter with dual notched bands using stub-loaded resonators is proposed. By using the signal interaction of two transmission paths, a wideband passband and two notched bands can be independently achieved and designed. By cascading two back-to-back vertical transitions, a six-pole wideband filter with equal ripple filtering response is synthetically analyzed. The dual notched bands are controlled by the even- and odd-mode resonant frequencies of the stub-loaded resonator. As a design example, the proposed wideband filter with dual notched bands is simulated and fabricated. The desired wideband filtering response is experimentally validated, and two notched bands are measured at 3.04 and 3.85 GHz, respectively.
Improving police interventions during mental health-related encounters: past, present and future

ABSTRACT There are calls across America for police to re-imagine themselves as ‘guardians’ rather than ‘warriors’ in the performance of their innumerable duties. The contentious history of police attitudes and practices surrounding encounters with people affected by mental illnesses can be understood through the lens of this wider push towards guardianship. At least as far back as the de-institutionalisation of mental health care and the profound lack of community-based resources to fill service deficits, the role of police as mental health interventionists has been controversial and complex. This paper reviews the first wave of reform efforts designed to re-shape police sensibilities and practices in the handling of mental health-related encounters. We argue that such efforts, centred on specialised training and cooperative agreements with the health care sector, have advanced a guardian mindset through improved knowledge and attitudes about mental health vulnerabilities and needs. Building on the progress made, we suggest there are critical opportunities for a new wave of efforts that can further advance the guardianship agenda. We highlight three such opportunities: (1) enhancing experiences of procedural justice during mental health-related encounters; (2) building the evidence base through integrated data sets; and (3) balancing a ‘case-based’ focus with a ‘place-based’ focus.
Predicting adolescents' smoking status in Belgium: The role of music television viewing, gender, and school year

The aim of the present study is to determine whether (1) adolescents' music television viewing at baseline was associated with their smoking behavior 2 years later, and (2) to examine whether respondents' gender and school year moderated this relationship. A prospective cohort study with a 2-year follow-up of 1,147 (baseline non-smoking) adolescents between 13 (youngest cohort) and 16 years old (oldest cohort) was conducted in Flanders (Belgium) in order to examine these objectives. The data indicated that music television viewers have an increased probability of being a smoker 2 years later, even after entering the control variables in the model. This relationship appeared to be moderated by school year. The odds of being a smoker doubled for the adolescents in the youngest cohort who watched music television at least several times a week. For those in the youngest cohort who watched music television almost every day, the odds of being a smoker were almost four times higher than the odds of those watching rarely or not. For the adolescents in the oldest cohort no relationship between music television viewing and smoking was found.
Heterogeneous Algorithmic Skeletons for Fast Flow with Seamless Coordination over Hybrid Architectures

Algorithmic skeletons (`skeletons') abstract commonly-used patterns of parallel computation, communication, and interaction. They provide top-down design composition and control inheritance throughout the whole structure. The efficient execution of skeletal applications on a heterogeneous environment has long been of interest to the research community. Arguably, executing a coarse-grained resource-intensive skeletal workloads ought to achieve higher resource utilisation and, ultimately, better job makespan on heterogeneous systems due to the structured parallelism model. This paper presents a heterogeneous OpenCL-based GPU back-end for FastFlow, a widely-used skeletal framework. Our back-end allows the user to easily write any arbitrary OpenCL code inside an heterogeneous algorithmic skeleton and seamlessly control the allocation of OpenCL kernel over the hybrid (CPU/GPU) architecture. Our performance evaluation indicate that a skeletal program which employs our back-end is around one order of magnitude faster than a skeletal parallel program using the traditional homogeneous FastFlow skeletons with the serial version of OpenCL code.
Sublingual immunotherapy in allergic rhinitis

Current treatment options for allergic rhinitis (AR) include allergen avoidance and environmental control, pharmacotherapy, nasal surgery and immunotherapy. Among these, immunotherapy is the only therapeutic option that modifies fundamental immunologic mechanism by inducing desensitization. Specific allergen immunotherapy has been used for 1 century since 1911 and subcutaneous immunotherapy (SCIT) has been demonstrated to be effective in asthma and AR. However, SCIT has several disadvantages such as inconvenience, invasiveness and potentially severe systemic reactions. Thus, sublingual immunotherapy (SLIT) has recently received much attention around the world as a treatment for AR and is now widely used to replace the subcutaneous route. SLIT has recently been introduced in Korea and is now available for AR treatment in the Asia-Pacific region. This review offers better understanding of SLIT for AR by summarizing published articles and our previous works regarding proposed mechanisms, indication and efficacy, safety and adverse events, and compliance.
Professional learning communities and system improvement

This article outlines the progress and impact of professional learning communities within, between and across schools, as part of the implementation of whole system reform in Wales. It describes the way in which professional learning communities are being developed to support improvement and change across the education system in Wales. The article focuses on a group of schools that piloted a model of professional learning communities that subsequently have become a key part of the reform process in Wales and it highlights some of the challenges faced by the schools in establishing and sustaining professional learning communities. The article concludes by suggesting that professional learning communities offer one way of generating changed professional practice that can positively contribute to system-wide improvement.
Refinement of humoral immune monitoring in kidney transplantation: the role of “hidden” alloreactive memory B cells

The advent of novel sensitive assays assessing circulating anti‐human leukocyte antigen (HLA) antibodies has allowed recognizing humoral alloimmunity as the main immune‐mediated mechanism responsible for allograft rejection and graft loss in kidney transplantation. However, current immune‐monitoring techniques, exclusively focusing on circulating anti‐HLA antibodies, may underestimate the magnitude of humoral immune response as they exclude the memory B‐cell (mBC) pool. Different biological compartments are involved in the intricate mechanisms triggering humoral alloimmune responses even in absence of detectable circulating alloantibodies. Recent studies in animal models as well as in clinical kidney transplantation have shown the key role of this B‐cell subset triggering allograft rejection, thus emphasizing the value of recognizing antidonor mBC both as a biomarker of allosensitization and as therapeutic targets. Therefore, considerable efforts are being made among the transplant research community to better understand the role, hierarchy, and impact of mBC in the context of organ transplantation. In this review article, we provide a deep insight into the biology of mBC as well as main evidence of their role orchestrating allograft rejection. Also, we provide a thorough description of main immune‐monitoring tools aiming at tracking mBC and a rational for their potential use to refine current humoral immune‐risk assessment in kidney transplantation.
Importin α‐regulated nucleation of microtubules by TPX2

The importin α‐regulated microtubule‐associated protein TPX2 is known to be critical for meiotic and mitotic spindle formation in vertebrates, but its detailed mechanism of action and regulation is not understood. Here, the site of interaction on TPX2 for importin α is mapped. A TPX2 mutant that cannot bind importin α is constitutively active in the induction of microtubule‐containing aster‐like structures in Xenopus egg extract, demonstrating that no other importin α or RanGTPase target is required to mediate microtubule assembly in this system. Further, recombinant TPX2 is shown to induce the formation and bundling of microtubules in dilute solutions of pure tubulin. In this purified system, importin α prevents TPX2‐induced microtubule formation, but not TPX2–tubulin interaction or microtubule bundling. This demonstrates that TPX2 has more than one mode of interaction with tubulin and that only one of these types of interaction is abolished by importin α. The data suggest that the critical early function in spindle formation regulated by importin α is TPX2‐mediated microtubule nucleation.
Acute beta-adrenoceptor blockade improves efficacy of ibutilide in conversion of atrial fibrillation with a rapid ventricular rate.

AIMS Activation of beta-adrenoceptors attenuates prolongation of action potential duration induced by blockade of the delayed rectifier potassium current. We examined whether acute administration of beta-blocker could enhance ibutilide (IB) efficacy in conversion of atrial fibrillation (AF) with a rapid ventricular rate. METHODS AND RESULTS Ninety patients (aged 63 +/- 13.5 years) with rapidly conducting AF were randomized in to two groups. Group A (n = 44) received esmolol titrated to achieve a heart rate of <100 bpm followed by IB co-administration, while Group B (n = 46) were treated with IB as monotherapy. In Group A, 29 patients (67%) converted to sinus rhythm (SR) compared with 21 (46%) in Group B (P = 0.04). The use of esmolol was the most important predictor for cardioversion (P = 0.009). The slower the heart rate at the time of IB initiation, the higher the likelihood for cardioversion (P = 0.015). Patients in Group A had significantly shorter corrected QT interval (QTc) at the time of conversion than those in Group B (433 vs. 501 ms, P = 0.003). Two patients in Group A developed severe bradycardia, whereas three patients in Group B developed severe ventricular tachycardia (VT). CONCLUSION Compared with IB monotherapy, the combination therapy of esmolol and IB appears to be more effective in conversion of rapidly conducting AF back to SR. The addition of beta-blocker reduces QTc prolongation and diminishes the risk of VT at the expense, however, of increased bradycardic events.
Influences on young drivers' reported driving behaviours and perceptions: a focus group study

Forty-four (25 females) Australian citizens aged 17-24 years, all holding a current driving licence, participated in six focus groups to discuss: personal factors – age, maturity and inexperience; and other factors (including safety campaigns) which could affect driving behaviours. Group discussions were audio taped and data analysis proceeded by grounded theory. Major themes were: intersections, parental influences, inexperience/inattention and safety campaigns. Several sub-themes associated with these major themes were extracted from information provided by participants. Prime influencing parties on early driving experiences are outlined and potential areas for material from this study to contribute to road safety are discussed.
Linking Leader-Member Exchange and Employee Work Outcomes: The Mediating Role of Organizational Social and Economic Exchange

This study presents and tests a framework that links leader—member exchange (LMX) with two different forms of employee–organization exchange: organizational social exchange and organizational economic exchange. We propose that these two forms of employee exchange with the organization would be the main mechanisms through which LMX affects employees’ affective commitment and intention to leave. We used structural equation modelling to analyze the data collected from 239 employees in a foreign-invested enterprise in China. Results showed that both organizational social exchange and organizational economic exchange acted as full mediators in the relationships between LMX and the two outcome variables but in different directions. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.
Policy and Workforce Reform in England

Current workforce reform, known as Remodelling the School Workforce, is part of an enduring policy process where there have been tensions between public and private sector structures and cultures. I show that the New Right and New Labour governments who have built and configured site based performance management over the past quarter of a century have been concerned to construct a workforce sufficient in numbers and trained in implementation to deliver various reform strategies. In particular, I examine the interplay between managerialism and leadership, as the means by which policy entrepreneurs have enabled a workforce delivery composition and disposition.
BackPos: High Accuracy Backscatter Positioning System

Radio frequency identification (RFID) technology has been widely adopted in a variety of applications from logistics to access control. Many applications gain benefits from knowing the exact position of an RFID-tagged object. Existing localization algorithms in wireless network, however, can hardly be directly employed due to tag's limited capabilities in terms of energy and memory. In this paper, we propose BackPos, a fine-grained backscatter positioning technique using the commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) RFID products with detected phases. Our studies show that the phase is a stable indicator highly related to tag's position and preserved over frequency or tag orientation, but challenged by its periodicity and tag's diversity. We attempt to infer the distance differences from phases detected by antennas under triangle constraint. Further, hyperbolic positioning using the distance differences is employed to shrink the tag's candidate positions until finding out the real one. In combination with interrogation zone, we finally relax the triangle constraint and allow arbitrary deployment of antennas by sacrificing the feasible region. We implement a prototype of BackPos with COTS RFID products and evaluate this design in various scenarios. The results show that BackPos achieves the mean accuracy of 12:8cm with variance of 3:8 cm.
South Korean Military Service Promotes Smoking: A Quasi-Experimental Design

Purpose The South Korean (SK) government monopolizes the tobacco industry and is accused of pushing smoking on captive military personnel. However, estimating the association between military service and smoking is difficult, since military service is required for all SK men and the few civilian waivers are usually based on smoking determinants, e.g., social status. Materials and Methods Using a quasi-experimental design we validly estimate the association between military service and smoking. Military service was assigned by immigration patterns to the United States, instead of an experimenter, by comparing Korean Americans who happened to immigrate before or after the age(s) of mandated service. Smoking promotion in the military was also described among SK veterans, to identify the probable mechanisms for veterans' smoking tendencies. Results Veterans were 15% [95% confidence interval (CI), 4 to 27] more likely to ever-puff and 10% (95% CI, 0 to 23) more likely to ever-smoke cigarettes, compared to a similar group of civilians. Among veterans, 92% (95% CI, 89 to 95) recalled cigarettes were free, 30% (95% CI, 25 to 35) recalled smokers were given more work breaks and 38% (95% CI, 32 to 43) felt explicit "social pressure" to smoke. Free cigarettes was the strongest mechanism for veterans' smoking tendencies, e.g., veterans recalling free cigarette distribution were 16% (95% CI, 1 to 37) more likely to ever-smoke than veterans not recalling. Conclusion These patterns suggest military service is strongly associated with smoking, and differences between veterans and civilians smoking may carry over long after military service. Given military service remains entirely in government purview, actively changing military smoking policies may prove most efficacious. This highlights the importance of recent bans on military cigarette distribution, but policies eliminating other smoking encouragements described by veterans are necessary and could effectively reduce the smoking prevalence by as much as 10% in SK.
Non-Overlapping Subsequence Matching of Stream Synopses

In this paper, we propose SUbsequence Matching framework with cell MERgence (SUMMER) for online subsequence matching between histogram-based stream synopsis structures under the dynamic time warping distance. Given a query synopsis pattern, SUMMER continuously identifies all the matching subsequences for a stream as the bins are generated. To effectively reduce the computation time, we design a Weighted Dynamic Time Warping (WDTW) algorithm, which computes the warping distance directly between two histogram-based synopses. Furthermore, a Stack-based Overlapping Filter Algorithm (SOFA) is provided to remove the overlapping subsequences to avoid the redundant information. Finally, we design an optional refinement module to relax the subsequence range limit and improve the matching accuracy. Our experiments on real datasets show that the proposed method significantly speeds up the pattern matching without compromising the accuracy required when compared with other approaches.
Most of the human genome is transcribed.

Initial sequence annotations of the human genome have uncovered at least 32,000 genes (International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium 2001), or 26,000–39,000 genes (Venter et al. 2001). The mean gene size is thought to be 27 kb. Although these gene count estimates are acknowledged, by the authors themselves, to be very conservative, they are not significantly smaller than a recent estimate of 35,000 genes (Ewing and Green 2000) that was derived from a “proven” sampling technique. However, these gene count estimates are significantly smaller than the previously accepted estimates of 70,000 genes (Antequera and Bird 1993; Fields, et al. 1994). Suppose we accept the new gene counts, compromising between the two papers and settling at 35,000 genes. Let us further assume a euchromatic genome-size of 2.9 Gb. This would imply that only 33% of the genome is transcribed, and the remaining 67% is intergenic DNA between the genes. The amount of intergenic DNA so computed contradicts an assertion (Wong, et al. 2000) that most of the human genome is transcribed. We believe that this assertion is still correct. Interestingly, the discrepancy is not due to these newer but smaller gene counts. The problem arises from the mean gene sizes, which everyone significantly underestimates because of sampling biases resulting from the lack of large genomic contigs. We note that 25%, 50%, and 75% of the public consortium’s genome sequence is in contigs of sizes <21.0, <84.5, and <290.5 kb, respectively. In contrast, human genes can be much larger than these contigs. For example, the dystrophin gene on chromosome X is 2.3 Mb. The neurexin-3 gene on chromosome 14 is 1.46 Mb, and one intron is 479 kb. It is impossible to determine the correct size of a large gene when its exons are scattered among smaller contigs. Insofar as estimates of mean gene size are concerned, the failure to determine the correct size of a megabase-sized gene is equivalent to the omission of a thousand of the smallest genes. We introduce another estimate of the mean gene size— one that compensates for this contig-size bias, by focusing on the not insignificant fraction of the genome that is covered by large megabase-sized contigs. From this new estimate, we will argue that the newer but smaller gene counts are closer to being correct than the older but larger gene counts. Nevertheless, the mean gene size is so big that there is little room for intergenic DNA, and most of the human genome is transcribed.
Diffusion tensor tractography in cerebral small vessel disease: correlation with cognitive function

Background Patients with cerebral small vessel disease may suffer from varying levels of cognitive deficit and may progress on to vascular dementia. The extent of involvement, as seen on conventional magnetic resonance (MR) measures, correlates poorly with the level of cognitive decline. The purpose of this study was to investigate the utility of diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) as a marker for white matter damage in small vessel disease and to assess its correlation with cognitive function. Methods Thirty consecutive patients with cerebral small vessel disease underwent conventional MR imaging, DTI, and neuropsychological assessment. Results On tractographic analysis, fractional anisotropy was significantly reduced while mean diffusivity significantly increased in several white matter tracts. The alteration in DTI indices correlated well with cognitive function. No significant correlation was identified between T2 lesion load and cognitive performance. Conclusions Tractographic analysis of white matter integrity is a useful measure of disease severity and correlates well with cognitive function. It may have a significant potential in monitoring disease progression and may serve as a surrogate marker for treatment trials.