Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Lateral mobility and surface density of lipopolysaccharide in the outer membrane of Salmonella typhimurium.

Salmonella typhimurium 1195 mutant bacteria were allowed to produce clusters of lipopolysaccharide with new, wild-type specificity over the export sites. Ferritin-labeling experiments showed that the lipopolysaccharide diffuses away from the export sites at 37 °C and is found dispersed on the cell surface, whereas at 0 °C it remains immobile. The density of lipopolysaccharide molecules on the bacterial surface, measured as number of lipopolysaccharide molecules per μm2, or as percentage of the bacterial surface covered by lipopolysaccharide was determined in two wild-type S. typhimurium strains and one mutant strain, which was grown under conditions either permissive or nonpermissive for the formation of wild-type lipopolysaccharide. There are 0.7—1.0 × 105 lipopolysaccharide molecules per μm2 surface area. About 15—25% of the bacterial surface was found to be covered by lipopolysaccharide. The mean intermolecular distance at hypothetical uniform distribution of lipopolysaccharide was calculated to be in the range of 3—4 nm. It was of no consequence to the lipopolysaccharide surface density whether the mutant strain produced wildtype or mutant lipopolysaccharide. An estimate of the lateral diffusion constant D (D∼ 3 × 10−13 cm2/s) of lipopolysaccharide in the outer membrane was made from earlier published data [2]. Possible reasons for the low order of magnitude of D, based on the observed surface density, are discussed.
Wide bandgap switching devices for fusion reactor power supply systems

High voltage, high current power supplies are required to generate plasma in a tokamak. This equipment converts high voltage AC from the grid into both AC and DC energy sources. Recently, new switching devices based on wide bandgap semiconductors have emerged that could significantly improve the efficiency of these systems. This paper explores the benefits of using silicon carbide (SiC) MOSFET power modules in the power supplies that operate the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST). The case study for this work is the vertical stability (VS) coil and the neutral beam injection (NBI) power supplies. The analysis predicts that the efficiency of the VS and the NBI power supplies can be improved by up to 36 % and 66 %, respectively, by using these new components.
Re-Evaluating Capitalist and Democratic Peace Models†

After replicating Oneal and Russett's ( International Studies Quarterly , 41, 1997, 267; Journal of Peace Research , 36, 1999, 423) democratic peace model, Gartzke's ( American Journal of Political Science , 51, 2007, 180) study contends that “capitalism, and not democracy, leads to peace. Additional research is needed to corroborate, extend, and even refute the findings reported here. ” In response to this open invitation, this study re-evaluates Gartzke's capitalist peace model along with Oneal and Russett's democratic peace model. This study identifies that while the capitalist peace model suffers from model misspecification, observation omission, and sample selection bias, the democratic peace model commits measurement error. After correcting these four problems, this study uncovers that while capitalism does not emerge as a cause mitigating militarized disputes or wars in a consistent manner, democracy does.
Eating out in Europe : picnics, gourmet dining and snacks since the late eighteenth century

Europeans are eating out in unprecedented numbers - in cafs, pubs, brasseries and restaurants. Globalization brought about changes in patterns of leisure and consumption, as well as a democratization of restaurant culture. But what if we open up this concept of 'eating out' to include any eating that takes place outside the home? What cultural shifts can we see through time? What differences can we discover about pre-industrial, industrial and post-industrial societies? Eating Out in Europe addresses such questions as it examines changes in eating patterns through time. 'Eating out' is broadly conceived to cover everything from nibbling a pizza at work to dining in an exquisite restaurant, from suffering an institutional lunch at the school cafeteria to enjoying the natural world with a picnic. The meaning of eating out clearly varies enormously depending on the setting, circumstances and significance of the meal. The contributors describe and interpret the huge changes that occurred in eating habits throughout Europe by analyzing such factors as urbanization, technological innovation, demographic growth, employment patterns and identity formation. Case studies include the evolution of the pub, the rise of the fast food industry in Britain, picnicking in nineteenth-century France, snack culture in the Netherlands, industrial canteens in Germany, the rise of restaurants in Norway and countryside traditions in Hungary, among others. Fully comprehensive and illustrated, the contributors draw on examples throughout Europe from the late eighteenth century to the present day.
Systematic review of prognostic importance of extramural venous invasion in rectal cancer.

AIM To systematically review the survival outcomes relating to extramural venous invasion in rectal cancer. METHODS A systematic review was conducted using PRISMA guidelines. An electronic search was carried out using MEDLINE, EMBASE, CINAHL, Cochrane library databases, Google scholar and PubMed until October 2014. Search terms were used in combination to yield articles on extramural venous invasion in rectal cancer. Outcome measures included prevalence and 5-year survival rates. These were graphically displayed using Forest plots. Statistical analysis of the data was carried out. RESULTS Fourteen studies reported the prevalence of extramural venous invasion (EMVI) positive patients. Prevalence ranged from 9%-61%. The pooled prevalence of EMVI positivity was 26% [Random effects: Event rate 0.26 (0.18, 0.36)]. Most studies showed that EMVI related to worse oncological outcomes. The pooled overall survival was 39.5% [Random effects: Event rate 0.395 (0.29, 0.51)]. CONCLUSION Historically, there has been huge variation in the prevalence of EMVI through inconsistent reporting. However the presence of EMVI clearly leads to worse survival outcomes. As detection rates become more consistent, EMVI may be considered as part of risk-stratification in rectal cancer. Standardised histopathological definitions and the use of magnetic resonance imaging to identify EMVI will improve detection rates in the future.
Performance Analysis of Distributed Speech Recognition Using Analysis-by-Synthesis Frame Reduced Front End under Packet Loss Conditions

We proposed an analysis-by-synthesis (AbS) frame dropping algorithm for the front end of a distributed speech recognition (DSR) system that preserves rapidly changing frames for being more related to speech perception but discards slowly changing frames for providing little information. When applying DSR over error prone packet-switched networks, speech data will inevitably suffer from frame loss since packets may be lost or delayed due to congestion at routers. We further employed a model adaptation error concealment decoder at the back-end for compensating the mismatch between the pre-trained models and the test data, which contain missing frames caused by frame dropping at the front end and packet loss over the transmitted channel. This approach, for convenience, is denoted as AbS-MA. In the decoding process of AbS-MA, the transition probabilities of the hidden Markov models are dynamically adapted according to the time difference between successive observations. Experiments on the recognition of Mandarin digits were conducted to investigate the effectiveness of the proposed AbSMA method for a wide range of combinations of frame rates and packet loss conditions. The performance of the proposed AbSMA approach was compared with a baseline approach, in which the error concealment was implemented by an interpolation as the estimate of the missing frame of the received observations at the back-end. The experimental results show that AbS-MA is not only superior to the baseline in word accuracy but also significantly reduces the computation time.
Perspectives of Students with Disabilities Toward Physical Education: A Qualitative Inquiry Review

The purpose of this article is to review published qualitative inquiries that examine the perspective of students with disabilities toward experiences in physical education. Keyword searches were used to identify articles from electronic databases published from 1995 to 2014. Thirteen articles met all inclusion criteria, and findings were extracted. The 13 located qualitative articles were subject to a narrative analysis, and study characteristics were tabulated. The findings of targeted studies were explored and 3 thematic clusters emerged: (a) perspectives toward typically developing peers, (b) perspectives toward physical educators, and (c) perspectives toward inclusion and exclusion. Findings from this review support the notion that positive attitudes of physical educators may be a critical feature in ensuring meaningful learning experiences for students with disabilities. Meaningful learning experiences can be constructed through modifications and accommodations during activities, creating a welcoming physical education environment and providing a choice between inclusive and segregated learning environments. Directions for future research in this area are discussed.
Monte Carlo Simulation for Neptun 10 PC Medical Linear Accelerator and Calculations of Electron Beam Parameters

In recent decades, cancer has been one of the main ever increasing causes of death in developed countries. In order to fulfill the aforementioned considerations different techniques have been used, one of which is Monte Carlo simulation technique. High accuracy of the Monte Carlo simulation has been one of the main reason for its wide spread application. In this study, MCNP-4C code was employed to simulate electron mode of the Neptun 10PC linac, dosimetric quantities for conventional fields have also been both measured and calculated. Although Neptun 10 PC Linac is no longer licensed for installation in European and some other countries but regrettably nearly 10 of them have been installed in different centers around the country and are in operation. Therefore, in this circumstance, to improve the accuracy of treatment planning, Monte Carlo simulation for Neptun 10 PC was recognized as a necessity. Simulated and measured values of depth dose curves, off axis dose distributions for 6 , 8 and 10 MeV electrons applied for four different size fields,6×6 cm , 10×10 cm ,15×15 cm and 20×20 cm were obtained. The measurements were carried out by a Welhofer-Scanditronix dose scanning system, Semiconductor Detector and Ionization Chamber. The results of this study have revealed that the values of two main dosimetric quantities depth dose curves and off axis dose distributions, acquired by MCNP-4C simulation and the corresponding values achieved by direct measurements are in a very good agreement (within 1% to 2% difference). In general, very good consistency of simulated and measured results, is a good proof that the goal of this work has been accomplished. In other word where measurements of some parameters are not practically achievable, MCNP-4C simulation can be implemented confidently.
Parsing application layer protocol with commodity hardware for SDN

The de facto implementation of Software Defined Networking (SDN), i.e., OpenFlow, only parses L2-L4 headers, which limits the use of SDN to employ control intelligence in application layer. In this paper, we advocate content parsing to empower SDN with finer grained control ability over traffic. Specifically, we propose a scalable content parser, called COPY, to identify and parse application layer protocols. COPY creates a distinguishable counting context free grammar (DCCFG) to specify the protocol's semantics in application layer, and translates multiple DCCFGs into one distinguishable counting automaton (DCA). DCA is generated without semantic loss from the single DCCFG, and thus provides accurate and scalable parsing ability. Our experiments show that COPY precisely identifies every packet in a labeled trace. When comparing with other six approaches on the real traces, COPY performs 4.2Gb/s and 24.7Gb/s with single- and eight-thread models, respectively, which improves 20%-860% than others, and consumes acceptable offline overhead in time and space.
Interplay between Depressive-Like Behavior and the Immune System in an Animal Model of Prenatal Dexamethasone Administration

Glucocorticoids, namely dexamethasone, are prescribed during late gestation in pregnancies at risk of originating premature newborns, to promote fetal lung maturation. However, adverse early life events have been reported to induce long-lasting changes in the immune and central nervous systems. The accumulating evidence on bidirectional interactions between both systems in psychiatric disorders like depression, prompted us to further investigate the long-term impact of prenatal dexamethasone administration in depressive-like behavior, the immune system and in the ability to mount an immune response to acute infection. The adult male offspring of pregnant dams treated with dexamethasone present depressive-like behavior concomitant with a decrease in CD8+ T lymphocytes and an increase in B and CD4+ regulatory T cells. This is accompanied by lower levels of serum interleukin-6 (IL-6) and IL-10. Despite of these differences, when spleen cells are stimulated, in vitro, with lipopolysaccharide, those from adult rats prenatally treated with dexamethasone display a stronger pro-inflammatory cytokine response. However, this immune system profile does not hamper the ability of rats prenatally treated with dexamethasone to respond to acute infection by Listeria monocytogenes. Of notice, L. monocytogenes infection triggers depressive-like behavior in control animals but does not worsen that already present in dexamethasone-treated animals. In summary, prenatal administration of dexamethasone has long-lasting effects on the immune system and on behavior, which are not further aggravated by acute infection with L. monocytogenes.
Glutamate and the glutamate receptor system: a target for drug action

Glutamate is the most important excitatory neurotransmitter in the central nervous system. In the process, glutamate fulfills numerous physiological functions, but also plays an important role in the pathophysiology of different neurological and psychiatric diseases, especially when an imbalance in glutamatergic neurotransmission occurs. Under certain conditions, glutamate has a toxic action resulting from an activation of specific glutamate receptors, which leads to acute or chronic death of nerve cells. Such mechanisms are currently under discussion in acute neuronal death within the context of hypoxia, ischaemia and traumas, as well as in chronic neurodegenerative or neurometabolic diseases, idiopathic parkinsonian syndrome, Alzheimer's dementia and Huntington's disease. It is hoped that glutamate antagonists will lead to novel therapies for these diseases, whereby the further development of glutamate antagonists for blocking disease‐specific subtypes of glutamate receptors may be of major importance in the future. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Risk of eating disorder in school children from Buenos Aires: Its relationship with perfectionism / Riesgo de trastorno alimentario en niños escolarizados de Buenos Aires: Su asociación con perfeccionismo

Abstract The aim of this study is to evaluate risk of eating disorder (ED) and perfectionism in school girls and boys, and to analyze whether there is an association between both variables. The sample was composed by 337 children (51% girls-49% boys) aged between 9 and 13 years. A two-stage study was carried out. In the first stage, the children completed the following instruments: Sociodemographic questionnaire, Children’s Eating Attitudes Test (ChEAT), Cuestionario de Perfeccionismo Infantil-Child Perfectionism Questionnaire- and Child/adolescent Version of the Silhouette Rating Scale. They were weighed and measured by a nutritionist, accor- ding to the rules of the Sociedad Argentina de Pediatría. In the second stage, the children at risk for ED and a control group were interviewed in order to confirm or not such risk. After the first stage, a possible risk for ED was identified in a 30.56% of children. After the second stage, the risk was confirmed in a 9.79% of the children from the total sample, with no gender differences in this variable. It was found a significant positive association between the ChEAT total scores and the total score of Perfectionism measure. Finally, it was concluded that perfectionism is a key variable associated to risk for ED in children. Key words: Eating disorders, perfectionism, children, body image, ChEAT. Resumen El presente estudio se propone evaluar riesgo de trastorno alimentario (TA) y perfeccionismo en niñas y niños escolarizados y analizar si existe asociación entre ambas variables. La muestra estuvo conformada por 337 niños (51% niñas-49% varones) de entre 9 y 13 años. Se realizó un estudio en dos fases. En la primera, los niños completaron los siguientes instrumentos: Cuestionario sociodemográfico, Test de Actitudes Alimentarias para Niños (ChEAT), Cuestionario de Perfeccionis- mo Infantil y Escala de Siluetas para niños y adolescentes. Fueron pesados y medidos por una nutricionista, según normas de la Sociedad Argentina de Pediatría. En la segunda fase, los niños en riesgo de TA y un grupo control fueron entrevistados con el fin de corroborar o no dicho riesgo. Tras la primera fase se identificó un 30.56% de niños con posible riesgo de TA. Luego de la segunda fase se confirmó el riesgo en un 9.79% de los niños de la muestra total, no existiendo diferencias por sexo en esta variable. Se halló una asociación significativa positiva entre la puntuación total del ChEAT y la puntuación total en la medida de Perfeccionismo. Finalmente, se puede concluir que el perfeccionismo constituye una variable asociada al riesgo de TA en niños. Palabras clave: Trastornos alimentarios, perfeccionismo, niños, imagen corporal, ChEAT.
View and Share: Exploring Co-Present Viewing and Sharing of Pictures using Personal Projection

Co-present viewing and sharing of images on mobile devices is a popular but very cumbersome activity. Firstly, it is difficult to show a picture to a group of friends due to the small mobile phone screen and secondly it is difficult to share media between multiple friends, e.g., when considering Bluetooth usage and technical limitations, limited input and repeated user interactions. This paper introduces the View & Share system which allows mobile phone users to spontaneously form a group and engage in the viewing and sharing of images. A member of the group has a personal projector e.g., projector phone which is used to view pictures collaboratively. View & Share supports sharing with a single user, multiple users or all users, allows members to borrow the projected display and provides a private viewing mode between co-located users. This paper reports on the View & Share system, its implementation and an explorative user study with 12 participants showing the advantages of our system and user feedback.
Determination of Etiologic Mechanisms of Strokes Secondary to Coronary Artery Bypass Graft Surgery

Background and Purpose— Current research focused on stroke in the setting of coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) surgery has missed important opportunities for additional understanding by failing to consider the range of different stroke mechanisms. We developed and implemented a classification system to identify the distribution and timing of stroke subtypes. Methods— We conducted a regional study of 388 patients with the diagnosis of stroke after isolated CABG surgery in northern New England from 1992 to 2000. Data were collected on patient and disease characteristics, intraoperative and postoperative care, and outcomes. Stroke etiology was classified into 1 of the following: hemorrhage, thromboembolic (embolic, thrombotic, lacunar), hypoperfusion, other (subtype not listed above), multiple (≥2 competing mechanisms), or unclassified (unknown mechanism). The reliability of the classification system was determined by percent agreement and &kgr; statistics. Results— Embolic strokes accounted for 62.1% of strokes, followed by multiple etiologies (10.1%), hypoperfusion (8.8%), lacunar (3.1%), thrombotic (1.0%), and hemorrhage (1.0%). There were 54 strokes with unknown etiology (13.9%). There were no strokes classified as “other. ” Nearly 45% (105/235) of the embolic and 56% (18/32) of hypoperfusion strokes occurred within the first postoperative day. Conclusions— We used a locally developed classification system to determine the etiologic mechanism of 388 strokes secondary to CABG surgery. The principal etiologic mechanism was embolic, followed by stroke having multiple mechanisms and hypoperfusion. Regardless of mechanism, strokes predominantly occurred within the first postoperative day.
Role of Streptococcal Pyrogenic Exotoxin B in the Mouse Model of Group A Streptococcal Infection

ABSTRACT Streptococcal pyrogenic exotoxin B (SPE B) is a cysteine protease produced by Streptococcus pyogenes. In this study, the differences in virulence between protease-positive clinical isolates and their protease-negative mutants were examined in a mouse model. Isogenic protease-negative mutants were constructed by homologous recombination, using integrational plasmids to disrupt thespeB gene. These mutants caused less mortality and tissue damage than protease-positive strains when inoculated into BALB/c mice via air pouch, suggesting that SPE B cysteine protease plays an important role in the pathogenesis of S. pyogenesinfection. Reconstitution of SPE B in the air pouches increased the mortality of mice receiving the speB mutant strain. Infiltrated cell numbers in the exudates from the air pouches of mice infected with SPE B-producing S. pyogenes were higher than those from mice infected with protease-negative mutants at 12 h. However, despite pretreatment with vinblastine to deplete neutrophils, injection of protease-positive bacteria still resulted in severe tissue injury, indicating that neutrophil infiltration may not be the major factor involved in SPE B-enhanced tissue damage. The role of SPE B was further confirmed by demonstrating that SPE B immunization of mice conferred protection from challenge with a lethal dose of protease-positive bacteria.