Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Rotaviruses code for two types of glycoprotein precursors

Rotaviruses are nonenveloped viruses that code for two glycoproteins: a structural glycoprotein (VP7) and a nonstructural glycoprotein (NS29). The precursor to VP7 (37K) was shown to contain a 1.5K cleavable signal sequence. The 37K precursor was authentically processed (signal sequence cleaved and the polypeptide “core” glycosylated) when synthesized in a cell‐free system supplemented with dog pancreatic microsomes. Similar experiments were performed with the nonstructural glycoprotein precursor (20K); however, the 20K precursor contained an integral (noncleavable) signal sequence. Both precursors were inserted into membranes cotranslationally and both glycosylated products underwent post‐translational oligosaccharide processing. The results suggest a morphogenetic scheme for the simian rotavirus SA11.
The influence of antifouling practices on marine invasions

Vessel hull-fouling is increasingly recognised as one of the major vectors for the transfer of marine non-indigenous species. For hundreds of years, copper (Cu) has been used as a primary biocide to prevent the establishment of fouling assemblages on ships' hulls. Some non-indigenous fouling taxa continue to be transferred via hull-fouling despite the presence of Cu antifouling biocides. In addition, several of these species appear to enjoy a competitive advantage over similar native taxa within metal-polluted environments. This metal tolerance may further assist their establishment and spread in new habitats. This review synthesises existing research on the links between Cu and the invasion of fouling species, and shows that, with respect to the vector of hull-fouling, tolerance to Cu has the potential to play a role in the transfer of non-indigenous fouling organisms. Also highlighted are the future directions for research into this important nexus between industry, ecology and environmental management.
LTCC Balun Bandpass Filters Using Dual-Response Resonators

The design of compact balanced-to-unbalanced (balun) bandpass filters (BPFs) in the low temperature co-fired ceramic (LTCC) technology is presented. By incorporating the proposed dual-response resonators, an LTCC balun filter with desired bandpass response in differential mode and bandstop response in common mode is obtained. To further improve the out-band suppression response of the filter, another LTCC balun BPF with two controllable transmission zeros is described. Both balun BPFs are practically implemented showing the desired filtering performance with good amplitude and phase imbalances, which are less than 0.05 dB/0.26 dB and 1.9°/2.3° in the passbands, respectively.
Modulation of Human Cardiac Progenitors via Hypoxia-ERK Circuit Improves their Functional Bioactivities

Recent accumulating studies have reported that hypoxic preconditioning during ex vivo expansion enhanced the self-renewal or differentiation of various stem cells and provide an important strategy for the adequate modulation of oxygen in culture conditions, which might increase the functional bioactivity of these cells for cardiac regeneration. In this study, we proposed a novel priming protocol to increase the functional bioactivity of cardiac progenitor cells (CPCs) for the treatment of cardiac regeneration. Firstly, patient-derived c-kit+ CPCs isolated from the atrium of human hearts by enzymatic digestion and secondly, pivotal target molecules identifi ed their differentiation into specific cell lineages. We observed that hCPCs, in response to hypoxia, strongly activated ERK phosphorylation in ex vivo culture conditioning. Interestingly, pre-treatment with an ERK inhibitor, U0126, significantly enhanced cellular proliferation and tubular formation capacities of CPCs. Furthermore, we observed that hCPCs efficiently maintained the expression of the c-kit, a typical stem cell marker of CPCs, under both hypoxic conditioning and ERK inhibition. We also show that hCPCs, after preconditioning of both hypoxic and ERK inhibition, are capable of differentiating into smooth muscle cells (SMCs) and cardiomyocytes (CMs), but not endothelial cells (ECs), as demonstrated by the strong expression of α-SMA, Nkx2.5, and cTnT, respectively. From our results, we conclude that the functional bioactivity of patient-derived hCPCs and their ability to differentiate into SMCs and CMs can be effi ciently increased under specifically defined culture conditions such as shortterm hypoxic preconditioning and ERK inhibition.
Minimal use of working memory in a scene comparison task

Eye movement behaviour in hand-eye tasks suggests a preference for a “just in time” processing strategy that minimizes the use of working memory. In the present study, a scene comparison task was introduced to determine whether the preference holds when the task is primarily visual and when more complex naturalistic scenes are used as stimuli. In two experiments, participants made same or different judgements in response to simultaneously presented pairs of scenes that were identical or differed by one object. The number of fixations per scene glance and the number of fixations intervening between glances to corresponding objects suggest that frequently one object at a time is encoded and maintained in visual working memory. The same pattern of results was observed in a third experiment using word and object arrays. Overall, the results suggest a strong general bias toward minimal use of visual working memory in complex visual tasks.
Fundamental Mechanistic Studies on the Ultrasonic Treatment of Problematic Water Pollutants and Toxins

ion pathways are likely thermodynamically controlled because the barriers for the H abstraction reactions by HO· are normally either very low or even submerged below the reactants. The H abstraction by HO· should be exothermic since the strength of the O-H bond formed, 117.6 kcal·mol, is higher than the strength of C-H bonds broken. In the case of the thermodynamic control, the relative yields of the radicals discussed above is determined by their relative energies and hence should be identical to the relative yields evaluated for the H homolytic bond dissociation. 3.4. 6.2. 2 Fragmentation of Carbon Centered Radicals The carbon centered radicals produced by hydroxyl radical mediated hydrogen abstraction can undergo β-scission or react with O2 to produce peroxyl radicals. The unimolecular fragmentation channels for each of the carbon centered were calculated to
Evaluation of a Hospital Medical Library Class for NICU Nurses

Abstract A library class was designed and offered to new nurses from the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at the Children's Hospital of Michigan between 2003 and 2005. The class was intended to increase their knowledge of quality health information resources and to assist them with their smooth transition to a new health care organization. The goal of the library training class was to develop the nurses' awareness and knowledge of the library services and online resources on the organization Intranet and to improve their skills in finding reliable information related to patient care, patient parent education, and research. An evaluation study was conducted to assess the effectiveness of the library class. Although the findings demonstrated strengths of the library class, they also revealed some areas for improvement. The data gathered resulted in a number of recommendations regarding library instruction design and evaluation.
Performance and physiological responses of Salmonella Enteritidis challenged broilers fed diets containing antibiotic, probiotic and aromabiotic

The problems of salmonella zoonosis and antibiotic resistance leading to drop in productivity and performance in poultry and the negative effects on public health is persistent especially in third world countries. This study was designed to evaluate the performance and physiological responses of Salmonella enteritidischallenged broilers fed diets containing antibiotic, probiotic and aromabiotic. One hundred and twenty 8 weeks old commercial broilers were allotted into four treatment groups, T1 (control), T2 (antibiotic), T3 (Probiotic) and T4 (Aromabiotic) each replicated thrice, with 10 birds per replicate. The feeding trial lasted for four (4) weeks, after which cultured Salmonella enteritidis was inoculated at the dose rate of 107cfu orally. Birds were weighed on weekly basis, feed consumed and other performance parameters calculated, and blood samples were collected for both haematological and serum biochemical analysis 1, 3, 5, 7 and 9 day post infection (dpi). Data generated were subjected to analysis of variance (ANOVA) and means separated using Duncan multiple range test for significance (P<0.05). The results showed that T3 with probiotic has highest mean values for weight gain, lowest mortality and FCR better at P<0.05 than other treatment groups, also there were significant (P<0.05) differences on PCV, [Hb], WBC, Lymphocyte and Platelets across the treatment groups, T3 and T4 had significantly (P<0.05) higher values than T1 and T2 in these haematological parameters. T3 with probiotics has lowest mean values for ALT, AST, BUN, creatinine, triglycerides and cholesterol, no mortality was recorded before and after experimental infection in T3, while other treatment groups recorded varying degrees of mortality. Irrespective of the dpi, this trend was maintained, but as the severity of the infection progresses the values of all the parameters dropped until 9dpi, the mean values of globulin was maintained in the probiotic group (T3) throughout the post- infection period. Therefore it can be concluded that Probiotic supplementation improved performance, increased the immunity of the birds to salmonella challenge and does not have adverse effect on kidney and liver functions. Probiotic (Protexin®) can be administered at a dose rate of 7.5g/kg of broiler feed.
On the Use of Reproducing Kernel Hilbert Spaces in Functional Classification

ABSTRACT The Hájek–Feldman dichotomy establishes that two Gaussian measures are either mutually absolutely continuous with respect to each other (and hence there is a Radon–Nikodym density for each measure with respect to the other one) or mutually singular. Unlike the case of finite-dimensional Gaussian measures, there are nontrivial examples of both situations when dealing with Gaussian stochastic processes. This article provides: (a) Explicit expressions for the optimal (Bayes) rule and the minimal classification error probability in several relevant problems of supervised binary classification of mutually absolutely continuous Gaussian processes. The approach relies on some classical results in the theory of reproducing kernel Hilbert spaces (RKHS). (b) An interpretation, in terms of mutual singularity, for the so-called “near perfect classification” phenomenon. We show that the asymptotically optimal rule proposed by these authors can be identified with the sequence of optimal rules for an approximating sequence of classification problems in the absolutely continuous case. (c) As an application, we discuss a natural variable selection method, which essentially consists of taking the original functional data X(t), t ∈ [0, 1] to a d-dimensional marginal (X(t1), …, X(td)), which is chosen to minimize the classification error of the corresponding Fisher’s linear rule. We give precise conditions under which this discrimination method achieves the minimal classification error of the original functional problem. Supplementary materials for this article are available online.
Study on extraction of foreign invasive species Mikania micrantha based on unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) hyperspectral remote sensing

Mikania micrantha is a harmful foreign invasive species, which poses a great threat to the ecological balance and forestry production in southern China. In the study, typical Mikania micrantha multi-incidence area was used as the research area. After data pre-processing, 250 bands were obtained and subjected to a single factor ANOVA analysis. Anterior 10 bands with F values from the largest to the smallest were selected as the spectral characteristic bands. Spectral characteristics were extracted, together with texture characteristics. Texture characteristic of hyperspectral data was calculated by Gray level co-occurrence matrix, with processing window sizes of 11, 15, 21, 31, 41, 51, respectively. Results showed that the mean and second moment in processing window of 15 was more appropriate. A total of 200 verification points were randomly selected from five flight concentration areas. Visual interpretation was performed to verify the accuracy of the extraction. Results showed that the total accuracy was 85.5%. In this paper, key technology of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) hyperspectral remote sensing for extracting Mikania micrantha was studied, having constructed process of extracting the Mikania micrantha range by UAV hyperspectral data. Research results provide a new technical reference for the extraction of Mikania micrantha.
The Cytogenetic Effects of Sodium Metabisulfite, a Food Preservative in Root Tip Cells of Allium cepa L.

The effects of sodium metabisulfite (SMB) on mitosis were investigated in Allium cepa L. The roots of A. cepa were treated with SMB concentrations of 7.5 mg/lt, 15 mg/lt and 30 mg/lt for 10- and 20-hour treatment periods. SMB significantly decreased the mitotic index (MI) at all concentrations and treatment periods. While the decreasing of the MI was dose-dependent at 10 hours treatment time, SMB increased the mitotic abnormalities dose dependently.
Spatial assessment of relative resilience potential to support management of coral reef ecosystem in Doreri Bay area, Manokwari Regency, Indonesia

The assessment of ecological resilience is a new approach to support coral reef management, especially in addressing anthropogenic stresses and anticipating the impacts of climate change. This study applies advanced scientific approaches to spatially assess the relative resilience potential and to determine management actions on coral reef ecosystems in Doreri Bay, Manokwari Regency, Indonesia. The combination of underwater photo transect (UPT) method, belt transect, Aqua MODIS satellite data processing, interview, observation and laboratory analysis were applied to collect 11 resilience indicators data, consist of 7 process indicators and 4 stress/pressure indicators. The relative resilience potential and stress were analyzed through several stages including data compilation, normalization, scale setting, and calculation of resilience and stress value, site ranking and site categorization. Furthermore, the relative resilience potential, relative stress values, and the value of individual indicators were queried using criteria to determine target sites and appropriate management actions. The results indicate a spatial variation of the relative resilience potential of coral reefs, where sites with high resilience potential values are located near local community settlements, particularly around Lemon Island and Mansinam Island. Efforts to reduce pollutant sources from land are necessary on sites located near river estuaries and densely populated settlements. Most of the sites meet the criteria for fisheries management/enforcement. Efforts to manage fisheries and law enforcement need to be done on sites at the reefs of Sawaibu and around Raimuti Island.
A Modal Logic with Context-Dependent Inference for Non-Monotonic Reasoning

Contextual logic CoL is specified through an inference system which takes into account the context of reasoning, i.e. all given facts whatsoever. That is to say, conclusions are inferred with respect to the full set of premises. Hence, statements are relative to a context and they are expressed by means of formulas indexed with sets of formulas. A modal extension ECoL is also proposed for which examples are given that illustrate how natural it is to apply such a logic for the formalization of non-monotonic reasoning.
Re pair of g-ray-in duced base dam age in L5178Y sublines is dam age type-dependent and un re lated to ra di a tion sen si tiv ity .

The L5178Y (LY) murine lym phoma sublines LY-R and LY-S are dif fer en tially sen si tive to ion iz ing ra di a tion. The high ra di a tion sen si tiv ity of LY-S cells is re lated to im paired re join ing of DNA dou ble strand breaks. We found pre vi ously that the g-ray-induced base dam age is higher in the more radiosensitive LY-S subline. Here, we ex am ine the role of the re pair of ion iz ing ra di a tion in duced base dam age in re la tion to the radiosensitivity dif fer ence of these sublines. We used the GS/MS tech nique to es ti mate the re pair rates of six types of base dam age in g-ir ra di ated LY cells. All mod i fied DNA bases iden ti fied in the course of this study were typ i cal for ir ra di ated chromatin. The to tal amount of ini tial base dam age was higher in the ra di a tion sen si tive LY-S subline than in the ra di a tion re sis tant LY-R subline. The re pair rates of 5-OHMeUra, 5-OHCyt, 8-OHAde were sim i lar in both cell lines, the re pair rates of FapyAde and 8-OHGua were higher in the radiosensitive LY-S cell line, whereas the re pair of 5-OHUra was faster in its radio resistant coun ter part, the LY-R. Al to gether, the re pair rates of the g-ray-induced DNA base dam age in LY sublines are re lated nei ther to the ini tial amounts of the dam aged bases nor to the dif fer en tial le thal or mutagenic ef fects of ion iz ing ra di a tion in these sublines.
DiskSeen: Exploiting Disk Layout and Access History to Enhance I/O Prefetch

Current disk prefetch policies in major operating systems track access patterns at the level of the file abstraction. While this is useful for exploiting application-level access patterns, file-level prefetching cannot realize the full performance improvements achievable by prefetching. There are two reasons for this. First, certain prefetch opportunities can only be detected by knowing the data layout on disk, such as the contiguous layout of file metadata or data from multiple files. Second, nonsequential access of disk data (requiring disk head movement) is much slower than sequential access, and the penalty for mis-prefetching a 'random' block, relative to that of a sequential block, is correspondingly more costly. To overcome the inherent limitations of prefetching at the logical file level, we propose to perform prefetching directly at the level of disk layout, and in a portable way. Our technique, called DiskSeen, is intended to be supplementary to, and to work synergistically with, file-level prefetch policies, if present. DiskSeen tracks the locations and access times of disk blocks, and based on analysis of their temporal and spatial relationships, seeks to improve the sequentiality of disk accesses and overall prefetching performance. Our implementation of the DiskSeen scheme in the Linux 2.6 kernel shows that it can significantly improve the effectiveness of prefetching, reducing execution times by 20%-53% for micro-benchmarks and real applications such as grep, CVS, and TPC-H.
Impact of a Daily SMS Medication Reminder System on Tuberculosis Treatment Outcomes: A Randomized Controlled Trial

Importance The rapid uptake of mobile phones in low and middle-income countries over the past decade has provided public health programs unprecedented access to patients. While programs have used text messages to improve medication adherence, there have been no high-powered trials evaluating their impact on tuberculosis treatment outcomes. Objective To measure the impact of Zindagi SMS, a two-way SMS reminder system, on treatment success of people with drug-sensitive tuberculosis. Design We conducted a two-arm, parallel design, effectiveness randomized controlled trial in Karachi, Pakistan. Individual participants were randomized to either Zindagi SMS or the control group. Zindagi SMS sent daily SMS reminders to participants and asked them to respond through SMS or missed (unbilled) calls after taking their medication. Non-respondents were sent up to three reminders a day. Setting Public and private sector tuberculosis clinics in Karachi, Pakistan. Participants Newly-diagnosed patients with smear or bacteriologically positive pulmonary tuberculosis who were on treatment for less than two weeks; 15 years of age or older; reported having access to a mobile phone; and intended to live in Karachi throughout treatment were eligible to participate. We enrolled 2,207 participants, with 1,110 randomized to Zindagi SMS and 1,097 to the control group. Main Outcome The primary outcome was clinically recorded treatment success based upon intention-to-treat. Results We found no significant difference between the Zindagi SMS or control groups for treatment success (719 or 83% vs. 903 or 83%, respectively, p = 0·782). There was no significant program effect on self-reported medication adherence reported during unannounced visits during treatment. Conclusion In this large-scale randomized controlled effectiveness trial of SMS medication reminders for tuberculosis treatment, we found no significant impact. Trial Registration The trial was registered with ClinicalTrials.gov, NCT01690754.
Heparin requirements for full anticoagulation are higher for patients on dabigatran than for those on warfarin – a model-based study

Purpose Dabigatran (D) is increasingly used for chronic anticoagulation in place of warfarin (W). These patients may present for catheter-based procedures requiring full anticoagulation with heparin. This study compares the heparin sensitivity of patients previously on dabigatran, on warfarin, or on no chronic anticoagulant during ablation of atrial fibrillation. Patients and methods In a retrospective study of patients treated with D, W, or neither drug (N) undergoing atrial ablation, the timing of heparin doses and resulting activated clotting times were collected. First, the initial activated clotting time response to the first heparin bolus was compared. Then, a non-linear mixed effects modelling (NONMEM) analysis was performed, fitting a pharmacokinetic and -dynamic model to the entire anticoagulation course of each patient. Resulting model coefficients were used to compare the different patient groups. Results Data for 66 patients on dabigatran, 95 patients on warfarin, and 27 patients on no anticoagulation were retrieved. The last dose of dabigatran or warfarin had occurred 27 hours and 15 hours before the procedure. Groups D and N both responded significantly less (P<0.05) to the initial heparin bolus than Group W (approximately 50%). Likewise, the model coefficients resulting from the fit to each group reflected a significantly lower heparin sensitivity in groups D and N compared to W. Clearances of the heparin effect in the model did not differ significantly among groups. Conclusion Patients on warfarin with an average INR of 1.5 or higher are more sensitive to heparin than patients not previously anticoagulated or patients who discontinued dabigatran 27 hours earlier (approximately two half-lives) warfarin.