Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Propensity of Tampons and Barrier Contraceptives to Amplify Staphylococcus aureusToxic Shock Syndrome Toxin-I

Objective: Although the incidence of reported cases of toxic shock syndrome (TSS) has declined in recent years, the disease continues to occur in menstruating women using the newer, less-absorbent tampons or barrier contraceptives. Extant tampons and other vaginal devices were tested for the ability to induce TSS toxin-1 (TSST-1) by a TSS strain of Staphylococcus aureus MN8, a known high-toxin producer. Tested for the first time were 20 varieties of tampons, including 2 all-cotton brands newly introduced in the United States, a polyurethane contraceptive sponge, a latex diaphragm, and a polymer menstrual collection cup. Methods: All products were washed in sterile distilled water prior to use to reduce the effect of leachable chemicals. Duplicate experiments with unwashed products were also performed. Entire tampons and other test products were immersed in brain heart infusion broth plus yeast extract (BHIY) and inoculated with S. aureus MN8, a known TSST-1 producer. After incubation, the culture supernatants were assayed for TSST-1 by gel immunodiffusion. Results: Except for all-cotton tampons, greater amounts of TSST-1 were detected in the supernatant fluid of washed tampons than detected in those which were not washed. While TSST-1 levels in unwashed non-cotton tampons ranged from 0.5 to 8 μg/ml, when these products were washed, TSST-1 levels increased to 2–32 μg/ml. In all-cotton tampons, whether washed or not, there was no detectable TSST-1. Conclusions: The propensity for all-cotton tampons not to amplify TSST-1 in vitro suggests they would lower the risk for tampon-associated TSS.
Real time integrated vehicle dynamics control and trajectory planning with MPC for critical maneuvers

Collision avoidance maneuvers using braking and steering provide opportunities to avoid a collision at higher velocities compared to braking or steering only. This work investigates control concepts with integrated trajectory planning for combined braking and steering maneuvers using model predictive control (MPC) approaches. A major challenge here is the computational efficiency of the optimization process accounting for nonlinear constraints or nonlinear dynamic models. The main contribution of this work is the introduction of several simplifications which reduces the nonlinear optimization problem to a quadratic program and thus enables application in a vehicle demonstrator. Comparison of the quadratic MPC with the nonlinear MPC shows not only similar performance in a simulation environment, but demonstrates strongly reduced computation time by a factor of approximately 400.
Focus, mode and the nucleus

This article argues for the hypothesis that the location of the nucleus of the intonation contour is rule-governed. The term ‘nucleus’ is taken to refer to what has elsewhere been discussed as the ‘nuclear syllable’ (Crystal, 1969), ‘tonic’ (Halliday, 1967a), ‘sentence stress’ (Schmerling, 1976), ‘[I stress]’ (Chomsky & Halle, 1968), and ‘Designated Terminal Element’ (Liberman & Prince, 1977) (ignoring certain differences of analysis, such as that between double-nucleus and single-nucleus interpretation of some contours). Drawing on the facts of English and Dutch, it does so by attempting to identify the linguistic options available to speakers that are relevant to the location of the nucleus. The main argument hinges on the assumption that the chief functions of the location of the nucleus are (1) to signal the focus distribution of the sentence and (2) to signal whether the sentence is or is not meant as a counter-assertion, with the proviso that in many instances the location of the nucleus allows of more than one interpretation of one or both variables. Section 1 devotes some discussion to the problem of predictability, while the concepts of ‘focus’ and ‘normal stress’ are explored in Sections 2 to 4. Section 5 states the sentence accent assignment rule (SAAR), giving illustrations of its application. In Section 6, special attention is devoted to the pragmatic effects of SAAR in subject + predicate sentences. Section 7 attempts to give a fuller definition of the constituents the rule refers to and puts a general condition on its application. Section 8 introduces the variable mode, while Section 9 defines the problem of the location of the nucleus in sentences with minimal focus and introduces another accent assignment rule (PFR). A summary in the form of a set of propositions concludes the article. I should like to point out that most of the examples in this article are attested; it is only the more pedestrian ones that have been made up for the purpose of illustrating certain points.
Model creation and deformation for the automatic segmentation of the brain in MR images

In this paper a method for the automatic segmentation of the brain in magnetic resonance images is presented and validated. The proposed method involves two steps: 1) the creation of an initial model, and 2) the deformation of this model to fit the exact contours of the brain in the images. A new method to create the initial model has been developed and compared to a more traditional approach in which initial models are created by means of brain atlases. A comprehensive validation of the complete segmentation method has been conducted on a series of three-dimensional T1-weighted magnetization-prepared rapid gradient echo image volumes acquired both from control volunteers and patients suffering from Cushing's disease. This validation study compares results obtained with the method the authors propose and contours drawn manually. Averages differences between manual and automatic segmentation with the model creation method the authors propose are 1.7% and 2.7% for the control volunteers and the Cushing's patients, respectively. These numbers are 1.8% and 5.6% when the atlas-based method is used.
The Social Reality of Feeling Lonely

Loneliness has been defined as a dissatisfaction with one's social relationships. It is not clear, however, if loneliness is associated with having fewer close friends or fewer friends in general. Furthermore, this loneliness may be expressed either as a lack of relationships or as a lack of closeness in relationships. Finally, the lack of intimacy may be perceived only by the lonely person and may not reflect how the relationship appears to the partner. A total of 22 female and 20 male freshmen filled out a loneliness scale and social network questionnaire. Friends of the female subjects were also asked to fill out the social network questionnaire. Lonely persons listed as many best friends as nonlonely persons and were equally likely to have this choice reciprocated. Lonely subjects, however, did perceive a significantly lower level of intimacy in these relationship than did nonlonely subjects, and their "best friends" validated this perception. Lonely subjects did not differ in the number of friends in general that they listed, but their "friends" were significantly less likely to return this friendship choice.
RBF 1 , a Plant Homolog of the Bacterial Ribosome-Binding Factor RbfA , Acts in Processing of the Chloroplast 16 S Ribosomal RNA 1 [ W ]

Plastids (chloroplasts) possess 70S ribosomes that are very similar in structure and function to the ribosomes of their bacterial ancestors. While most components of the bacterial ribosome (ribosomal RNAs [rRNAs] and ribosomal proteins) are well conserved in the plastid ribosome, little is known about the factors mediating the biogenesis of plastid ribosomes. Here, we have investigated a putative homolog of the bacterial RbfA (for ribosome-binding factor A) protein that was identified as a coldshock protein and an auxiliary factor acting in the 59 maturation of the 16S rRNA. The unicellular green alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii and the vascular plant Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) both encode a single RbfA-like protein in their nuclear genomes. By generating specific antibodies against this protein, we show that the plant RbfA-like protein functions exclusively in the plastid, where it is associated with thylakoid membranes. Analysis of mutants for the corresponding gene (termed RBF1) reveals that the gene function is essential for photoautotrophic growth. Weak mutant alleles display reduced levels of plastid ribosomes, a specific depletion in 30S ribosomal subunits, and reduced activity of plastid protein biosynthesis. Our data suggest that, while the function in ribosome maturation and 16S rRNA 59 end processing is conserved, the RBF1 protein has assumed an additional role in 39 end processing. Together with the apparent absence of a homologous protein from plant mitochondria, our findings illustrate that the assembly process of the 70S ribosome is not strictly conserved and has undergone some modifications during organelle evolution.
The impact of availability, attraction and lethality of suicide methods on suicide rates in Germany

Wiedenmann & Weyerer (1) found a close relationship in West Germany from 1949 to 1989 between the overall suicide rate and the percentage of suicides using “low-threshold suicide methods. ” Lowthreshold methods are methods that, according to De Catanzaro (2), by-pass our innate suppressor mechanisms against their use by employing modern technology. These methods include the use of firearms and poisoning (by solids, liquids or gases), methods unavailable to primitive humans. Data were available to examine the generality of this result from England and Wales, Japan and the United States. The correlations between the suicide rates by low-threshold and high-threshold methods and the overall suicide rate are shown in Table 1. The results reported by Wiedenmann & Weyerer were replicated by the data for England and Wales
Herbivory Reduces the Strength of Pollinator‐Mediated Selection in the Mediterranean Herb Erysimum mediohispanicum: Consequences for Plant Specialization

In this study, I tested whether selection occurring on several morphological and floral traits in Erysimum mediohispanicum (Cruciferae) is modified by the effects of herbivores. Six plots were established in 1997 in the Sierra Nevada, Spain; three were fenced to exclude native ungulates, and the remaining were open to ungulates. I determined pollinator and ungulate preferences for plant traits and their effect on plant fecundity. Then I compared the selection regimes between plants excluded from herbivores and plants open to them. When ungulates were absent, I found significant selection on flower number, reproductive stalk height, basal diameter of the stalks, petal length, and inner diameter of the flowers. When ungulates were present, selection on floral traits completely disappeared, and selection strength on flower number and morphological traits decreased. This effect was due to the ungulate preference for larger plants and the phenotypic correlations between plant size and floral traits. Results suggest that pollinator‐mediated selection can be disrupted by conflicting effects of plant enemies acting during or subsequent to pollination. An accurate picture of the pollinator role as selective pressure requires the consideration of the entire life cycle of the plant as well as the ecological scenario in which the interactions occur.
Subjects and Disciplines: asymmetries in a collaborative curriculum development project

Abstract Teachers and university professors hold strong, and often different, views on school subjects and academic disciplines. This paper explores the meanings of subjects and disciplines for teachers and university professors who have different subject or disciplinary affiliations as these emerge within discussions about curriculum in a professional development context. It describes a group of university professors and secondary school teachers who met to discuss new developments in research in the humanities and social sciences and their impact on school curriculum. The professors brought their expertise in their academic disciplines and their teaching experience to the conversations. Teachers brought their varied disciplinary knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge and a deep understanding of schools. They perceived their primary goal as making ‘translations’ and ‘transformations’ between university and school. There were many bridges to cross within these complex and multi‐layered conversations. Th.
A transformation for the mechanical fingerprints of complex biomolecular interactions

Significance A conversion between macromolecular shapes—a conformational change—is usually the mechanism that gives function to biological macromolecules. Single-molecule force spectroscopy probes conformational changes by applying force to individual macromolecules and recording their response, or “mechanical fingerprints”, in the form of force–extension curves. The mechanical fingerprints of proteins, nucleic acids, and their assemblies often feature elaborate signatures that reflect the complexity of the underlying biomolecular interactions. This study introduces a transformation that converts—in a model-free way—the mechanical fingerprints of a complex system into a map of force-dependent transition rates. Once transformed into a rate map, the mechanical fingerprints can be interpreted in terms of the activation barriers and the intrinsic timescales of a biological process. Biological processes are carried out through molecular conformational transitions, ranging from the structural changes within biomolecules to the formation of macromolecular complexes and the associations between the complexes themselves. These transitions cover a vast range of timescales and are governed by a tangled network of molecular interactions. The resulting hierarchy of interactions, in turn, becomes encoded in the experimentally measurable “mechanical fingerprints” of the biomolecules, their force–extension curves. However, how can we decode these fingerprints so that they reveal the kinetic barriers and the associated timescales of a biological process? Here, we show that this can be accomplished with a simple, model-free transformation that is general enough to be applicable to molecular interactions involving an arbitrarily large number of kinetic barriers. Specifically, the transformation converts the mechanical fingerprints of the system directly into a map of force-dependent rate constants. This map reveals the kinetics of the multitude of rate processes in the system beyond what is typically accessible to direct measurements. With the contributions from individual barriers to the interaction network now “untangled”, the map is straightforward to analyze in terms of the prominent barriers and timescales. Practical implementation of the transformation is illustrated with simulated biomolecular interactions that comprise different patterns of complexity—from a cascade of activation barriers to competing dissociation pathways.
Visual servoing and robust object manipulation using symmetries and Conformai Geometric Algebra

Object tracking and manipulation is an important process for many applications in robotics and computer vision. A novel 3D pose estimation of objects using reflectionally symmetry formulated in Conformai Geometric Algebra (CGA) is proposed in this work. The synthesis of the kinematics model for robots and a sliding mode controller using the CGA approach is described. Real time implementation results are presented for the pose estimation of object using a stereo vision system.
The Effect of Electric Shock on Rats' Choice between Familiar and Unfamiliar Maze Arms: A Replication

It is argued that experiments showing that noise and electric shock produce gross changes in rats' locomotor activity are only weak evidence for a relationship between fear and exploration. Stronger evidence comes from an experiment in which fewer shocked than unshocked rats chose the unfamiliar arm of a maze. Certain details of this experiment are unclear, and an attempt is made here to confirm its findings. In one experiment, shocked rats again chose the unfamiliar arm less often than unshocked rats, and in a second experiment it was shown that this finding cannot be explained by saying that shocked rats choose at random. These results are discussed in relation to recent suggestions about exploration in rats.
Coping With Paradox

A notable feature of paradox is recognition that seemingly contradictory terms are inextricably intertwined and interrelated—holding out the hope that something new can be learned from the cognitive tension contained within. Aram has characterized the central concern of the business and society field as the paradox of interdependent relations. Our study argues that this and related paradoxes can be addressed by engaging with others and trying to gain shared insight via an interactive, developmental, exploratory sensemaking process that can inform the governance of stakeholder networks. We advocate multistakeholder learning dialogues (MSLDs) as a means for both scholars and practitioners to construct meanings that can guide joint efforts to cope with messy problems that help shape complex, paradoxical relationships within stakeholder networks.
Minimum Splits Based Discretization for Continuous Features

Discretization refers to splitting the range of continuous values into intervals so as to provide useful information about classes. This is usually done by minimizing a goodness measure, subject to constraints such as the maximal number of intervals, the minimal number of examples per interval, or some stopping criterion for splitting. We take a different approach by searching for minimum splits that minimize the number of intervals with respect to a threshold of impurity (i.e., badness). We propose a "total entropy" motivated selection of the "best" split from minimum splits, without requiring additional constraints. Experiments show that the proposed method produces better decision trees.
A new method for handling the traveling salesman problem based on parallelized genetic ant colony systems

In this paper, we present a new method for handling the traveling salesman problem, called the parallelized genetic ant colony systems (PGACS). The proposed method combines genetic algorithms with new crossover operations, hybrid mutation operations and ant colony systems with communication strategies. We also make an experiment using three well-known data sets of the traveling salesman problem. The experiment results show that the performance of the proposed method is better than the method presented in [2] in both the result and the convergence time.
Intraspecific leaf trait variability along a boreal-to-tropical community diversity gradient

Disentangling the mechanisms that shape community assembly across diversity gradients is a central matter in ecology. While many studies have explored community assembly through species average trait values, there is a growing understanding that intraspecific trait variation (ITV) can also play a critical role in species coexistence. Classic biodiversity theory hypothesizes that higher diversity at species-rich sites can arise from narrower niches relative to species-poor sites, which would be reflected in reduced ITV as species richness increases. To explore how ITV in woody plant communities changes with species richness, we compiled leaf trait data (leaf size and specific leaf area) in a total of 521 woody plant species from 21 forest communities that differed dramatically in species richness, ranging from boreal to tropical rainforests. At each forest, we assessed ITV as an estimate of species niche breadth and we quantified the degree of trait overlap among co-occurring species as a measure of species functional similarity. We found ITV was relatively invariant across the species richness gradient. In addition, we found that species functional similarity increased with diversity. Contrary to the expectation from classic biodiversity theory, our results rather suggest that neutral processes or equalizing mechanisms can be acting as potential drivers shaping community assembly in hyperdiverse forests.
Prevalence of Reported Migraine Headaches in Canadian Adolescents

Objective: To examine self-reported prevalence data for migraine among adolescent Canadians and to explore how reported migraine treatment varies by age. Methods: We analyzed the microdata files of the Canadian National Population Health Survey (1996-1997). Respondents reported whether they had “migraine headaches diagnosed by a health professional”. They also reported whether they received “any treatment or medication for migraine headaches”, with treatments subdivided into drug, diet or “other”. Results: 99.9% of 173,216 eligible respondents reported whether they had migraine headaches. Migraine was reported by 2.4% of Canadian youth aged 12-14 years and by 5.0% of 15-19 year-olds compared to 7.2% of adults aged 20 years of age (p< 0.0001, chi-square). Active treatment was used by 51.0% - higher by females (53.1%) than males (44.7%) (p<0.0001 chi-square). Treatment was used by 45.1% of 12-14 year-olds, by 45.7% of 15-19 year-olds and by 51.5% of those 20 years (p=0.0027). The nature of the active treatment choice (drug, diet or other) did not significantly vary within the age groups studied. Conclusion: We present robust estimates of self-report diagnosed migraine prevalence, derived from a large nationally representative population survey. Estimates of the prevalence of active treatment for migraine provide insight into the burden of migraine within this population.
March 2002: 28‐year‐old woman with neck and back pain

Following a car accident a 28-year-old female, complained of a sharp pain of the anterior and posterior base of the neck on expiration and with exertion. Subsequently, she noticed a feeling of discomfort in her back when lifting her arm above her head. Imaging studies revealed a tumor mass involving the third intercostal nerve on the right side of T2. The differential diagnosis included neurofibroma and neurilemmoma. This was followed annually and five years later an increase in size warranted a transthoracic, transpleural removal en bloc of this lesion. At surgery, a 3 cm soft tissue tumor engulfed the third intercostal nerve and extended into the third intervertebral foramen where the proximal part of the nerve root was enlarged. The right third intercostal nerve was dissected and removed along with the tumor, after negative nerve stimulation. Histopathological examination showed multiple enlarged coalescent lymphoid follicles with an onion skin appearance of tight concentric layering of small, uniform mature lymphocytes at the periphery, arranged in a targetoid fashion with broad mantle zones and relatively small germinal centers. The germinal centers of variable size included hyalinized blood vessels. Lollipop follicles were seen. The interfollicular stroma showed numerous hyperplastic collagenized capillaries within an inflammatory background. However, the perinodal soft tissue was replaced by numerous inflammatory cells, primarily lymphocytes. The final diagnosis was Castleman's disease, hyaline vascular type. Castleman's disease can mimic various tumors and because Castleman's disease is a rare reactive entity, its diagnosis is generally overlooked by radiologists and clinicians. It is likely that this mass arose from one of the posterior intercostal lymph nodes, situated in the paravertebral region, however the capsule was not readily seen and the sinuses were not apparent. Almost all previous cases of Castleman's disease, hyaline vascular type were described in the anterior mediastinum. Hyaline vascular Castleman's disease usually does not invade and replace neighboring structures. This case is unique because of its location and the local invasion of adjacent structures.