Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Serum Amyloid A Protein Binds to Outer Membrane Protein A of Gram-negative Bacteria*

Serum amyloid A (SAA) is the major acute phase protein in man and most mammals. We observed SAA binding to a surprisingly large number of Gram-negative bacteria, including Escherichia coli, Salmonella typhimurium, Shigella flexneri, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Vibrio cholerae, and Pseudomonas aeruginosa. The binding was found to be high affinity and rapid. Importantly, this binding was not inhibited by high density lipoprotein with which SAA is normally complexed in serum. Binding was also observed when bacteria were offered serum containing SAA. Ligand blots following SDS-PAGE or two-dimensional gels revealed two major ligands of 29 and 35 kDa that bound SAA when probing with radiolabeled SAA or SAA and monoclonal anti-SAA. Following fractionation the ligand was found in the outer membrane fraction of E. coli and was identified by matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry to be outer membrane protein A (OmpA). OmpA-deficient E. coli did not bind SAA, and following purification of OmpA the protein retained binding activity. The ligands on other bacteria were likely to be homologues of OmpA because wild type, but not OprF-deficient, P. aeruginosa bound SAA.
A pattern ordering algorithm for reducing the size of fault dictionaries

Determining the relation between defects and faults (fault diagnosis) in digital circuits is a key concept for semiconductors production yield improvement. Nowadays, fault diagnosis requires heavy computations and large data structures. This paper proposes a novel technique for reducing fault dictionary size for combinational and scanned circuits by means of pattern-ordering. The proposed algorithm manipulates conventional tree-based fault dictionaries. In such structures, faults are diagnosed by traversing the tree from its root to a leaf; we aim at globally reducing the length of such paths by a modified patterns order, thus also reducing the dictionary size. This approach does not cause any loss of information, since it is demonstrated for combinational circuits that the ability of a pattern set in diagnosing faults remains unaltered when modifying the patterns order. The effectiveness of the proposed approach is demonstrated for a set of sequential benchmarks equipped with scan chains
The influence of hepatitis C virus genotypes on the outcome of liver transplantation.

BACKGROUND The aim of this study was to report the influence of hepatitis C virus (HCV) genotypes and HLA matches on the outcome of liver transplantation, hepatitis recurrence, and progression to cirrhosis after transplantation. METHODS HCV genotypes were determined from pretransplantation sera and/or liver explant tissues from 202 patients with HCV-related end-stage liver disease. One hundred fifty patients with known infecting genotype for whom posttransplantation biopsy specimens were available or who had normal results of liver injury tests constituted the group analyzed. Patients were followed up for up to 4.5 years. Hepatitis activity index scores at the time of disease recurrence were used to assess disease activity. Cirrhosis was diagnosed by using histological evidence. The number of HLA matches with respect to A, B, DR, and DQ loci was determined. RESULTS The rates of hepatitis recurrence were 25% and 75% at 1 year and 4 years, respectively; Kaplan-Meier survival analysis did not reveal significant differences between the infecting genotypes with respect to overall rates of survival or recurrence of hepatitis. At hepatitis recurrence, hepatitis activity index scores did not differ between the genotype groups. The distribution of infecting genotypes among the 7 patients who developed cirrhosis is reflective of pretransplantation distribution. Neither HLA site-specific nor total matches affected the rates of survival or disease recurrence. CONCLUSIONS The infecting HCV genotype had no influence on the incidence or severity of recurrent hepatitis, rate of survival, or development of cirrhosis. HLA matching does not influence transplantation outcome for HCV-related disease.
Church-based social support and change in health over time

The purpose of this study is to compare and contrast the effects of two types of church-based social support on change in health over time. The first is anticipated support, which is defined as the belief that assistance will be forthcoming in the future should the need arise. The second is enacted support, which refers to assistance that has actually been provided by fellow church members. Data from a nationwide longitudinal survey of older adults suggest that anticipated support is associated with more favorable changes in health, whereas enacted support is associated with a slight decline in health over time. Further analyses suggest that feelings of personal control partially mediate the effect of anticipated support on change in health.
Impact of eNOS-Dependent Oxidative Stress on Endothelial Function and Neointima Formation.

AIMS Vascular oxidative stress generated by endothelial NO synthase (eNOS) was observed in experimental and clinical cardiovascular disease, but its relative importance for vascular pathologies is unclear. We investigated the impact of eNOS-dependent vascular oxidative stress on endothelial function and on neointimal hyperplasia. RESULTS A dimer-destabilized mutant of bovine eNOS where cysteine 101 was replaced by alanine was cloned and introduced into an eNOS-deficient mouse strain (eNOS-KO) in an endothelial-specific manner. Destabilization of mutant eNOS in cells and eNOS-KO was confirmed by the reduced dimer/monomer ratio. Purified mutant eNOS and transfected cells generated less citrulline and NO, respectively, while superoxide generation was enhanced. In eNOS-KO, introduction of mutant eNOS caused a 2.3-3.7-fold increase in superoxide and peroxynitrite formation in the aorta and myocardium. This was completely blunted by an NOS inhibitor. Nevertheless, expression of mutant eNOS in eNOS-KO completely restored maximal aortic endothelium-dependent relaxation to acetylcholine. Neointimal hyperplasia induced by carotid binding was much larger in eNOS-KO than in mutant eNOS-KO and C57BL/6, while the latter strains showed comparable hyperplasia. Likewise, vascular remodeling was blunted in eNOS-KO only. INNOVATION Our results provide the first in vivo evidence that eNOS-dependent oxidative stress is unlikely to be an initial cause of impaired endothelium-dependent vasodilation and/or a pathologic factor promoting intimal hyperplasia. These findings highlight the importance of other sources of vascular oxidative stress in cardiovascular disease. CONCLUSION eNOS-dependent oxidative stress is unlikely to induce functional vascular damage as long as concomitant generation of NO is preserved. This underlines the importance of current and new therapeutic strategies in improving endothelial NO generation.
Military deployment and its effects on moral development over the course of deployment

Two groups of soldiers are followed for the duration of a deployment. One of these groups actually goes on deployment and the other stays at home. Both groups are subjected to a questionnaire at the same moments: before the first group is sent on deployment, during the deployment and lastly after the deployed group returns. The questionnaire is used to compare the groups for changes in their moral development over the course of deployment. The answers are scored by two raters according the theory of moral development. The results show no changes in moral development between moments of measurement and no change comparing the deployed group with the non-deployed group.
The Effect of a Dairy-Based Recovery Beverage on Post-Exercise Appetite and Energy Intake in Active Females

This study was designed to assess the effect of a dairy-based recovery beverage on post-exercise appetite and energy intake in active females. Thirteen active females completed three trials in a crossover design. Participants completed 60 min of cycling at 65% V̇O2peak, before a 120 min recovery period. On completion of cycling, participants consumed a commercially available dairy-based beverage (DBB), a commercially available carbohydrate beverage (CHO), or a water control (H2O). Non-esterified fatty acids, glucose, and appetite-related peptides alongside measures of subjective appetite were sampled at baseline and at 30 min intervals during recovery. At 120 min, energy intake was assessed in the laboratory by ad libitum assessment, and in the free-living environment by weighed food record for the remainder of the study day. Energy intake at the ad libitum lunch was lower after DBB compared to H2O (4.43 ± 0.20, 5.58 ± 0.41 MJ, respectively; p = 0.046; (95% CI: −2.28, −0.20 MJ)), but was not different to CHO (5.21 ± 0.46 MJ), with no difference between trials thereafter. Insulin and GLP-17-36 were higher following DBB compared to H2O (p = 0.015 and p = 0.001, respectively) but not to CHO (p = 1.00 and p = 0.146, respectively). In addition, glucagon was higher following DBB compared to CHO (p = 0.008) but not to H2O (p = 0.074). The results demonstrate that where DBB consumption may manifest in accelerated recovery, this may be possible without significantly affecting total energy intake and subsequent appetite-related responses relative to a CHO beverage.
Toward Integrative Dynamic Models for Adaptive Perspective Taking

In a matter of mere milliseconds, conversational partners can transform their expectations about the world in a way that accords with another person's perspective. At the same time, in similar situations, the exact opposite also appears to be true. Rather than being at odds, these findings suggest that there are multiple contextual and processing constraints that may guide when and how people consider perspective. These constraints are shaped by a host of factors, including the availability of social and environmental cues, and intrinsic biases and cognitive abilities. To explain how these might be integrated in a new way forward, we turn to an adaptive account of interpersonal interaction. This account draws from basic principles of dynamical systems, principles that we argue are already expressed, both implicitly and explicitly, within a broad landscape of existing research. We then showcase an initial attempt to develop a computational framework to instantiate some of these principles. This framework, consisting of what we argue to be important mechanistic insights rendered by neural network models, is based on a promising and long-standing approach that has yet to take hold in the current domain. We argue that by bridging this gap, new insights into other theoretical accounts, such as the connections between memory and common ground information, might be revealed.
Using health production functions to evaluate treatment effectiveness: an application to a community mental health service.

The randomized controlled trial (RCT) is the recommended means of evaluating health care effectiveness and cost-effectiveness. Whilst representing a 'gold-standard' in health services research, RCT evidence on the clinical and economic desirability of services and treatments is often absent. Where RCT evidence is lacking, or where it is infeasible to implement randomized controlled comparisons, longitudinal observational and naturalistic data sources when analysed appropriately can yield useful insights regarding the clinical effectiveness and economic efficiency of treatments. In this paper we demonstrate the utility of applying panel estimation methods to data from an Italian psychiatric case register as a means of modelling the mental health outcomes of patients referred to a community-based mental health service. Emphasis is placed on quantifying the clinical effectiveness of consultations with different mental health professionals (including in-patient days) and whether service outcomes are affected by psychiatric diagnosis. The impact of service consultations and their interaction with different types of psychiatric diagnosis on a measure of patient mental health are found to be statistically significant, although the size of these effects are not substantial from a clinical perspective.
100 MS/S, 10-Bit ADC using Pipelined Successive Approximation

This paper presents an analog-to-digital converter (ADC), using pipelined successive approximation register (SAR) architecture. The structure which is a combination of SAR-ADC and pipelined ADC benefits from each of their advantages. A new synchronization method is proposed to improve the pipelined SAR-ADC's speed. The proposed method reduces the total conversion without limiting the ADC performance. To evaluate the proposed method a 10-bit 100 MS/s is designed in 0.5 μm CMOS process technology. According to the obtained simulation results, the designed ADC digitizes a 9-MHz input with 54.19 dB SNDR while consuming 57.3 mw from a 5-V supply.
RDIS: A recursively defined invertible set scheme to tolerate multiple stuck-at faults in resistive memory

With their potential for high scalability and density, resistive memories are foreseen as a promising technology that overcomes the physical limitations confronted by charge-based DRAM and flash memory. Yet, a main burden towards the successful adoption and commercialization of resistive memories is their low cell reliability caused by process variation and limited write endurance. Typically, faulty and worn-out cells are permanently stuck at either `0' or `1'. To overcome the challenge, a robust error correction scheme that can recover from many hard faults is required. In this paper, we propose and evaluate RDIS, a novel scheme to efficiently tolerate memory stuck-at faults. RDIS allows for the correct retrieval of data by recursively determining and efficiently keeping track of the positions of the bits that are stuck at a value different from the ones that are written, and then, at read time, by inverting the values read from those positions. RDIS is characterized by a very low probability of failure that increases slowly with the relative increase in the number of faults. Moreover, RDIS tolerates many more faults than the best existing scheme-by up to 95% on average at the same overhead level.
Effects of income supplementation on health of the poor elderly: The case of Mexico

Significance Effects of income support on well-being and health of the poor elderly especially in low-income country settings is uncertain as experiments that increase incomes and evaluate their impacts on health among the elderly population are almost nonexistent around the world. In our experiment in the Mexican state of Yucatan, we find strong evidence that income supplements for the poor elderly in low- and middle-income settings can have significant health benefits even in the short run. Additional experiments should be conducted around the world as our experience indicates that these experiments are operationally feasible. We use an income supplementation experiment we designed in the state of Yucatan in Mexico for residents 70 y and older to evaluate health impacts of additional income. Two cities in the State of Yucatan, Valladolid (treatment) and Motul (control), were selected for the income supplementation experiment. Elderly residents of Valladolid were provided the equivalent of an additional $67 per month, a 44% increase in average household income. We designed a survey given to residents of both cities before and 6 mo after the income supplement about their health and other aspects of overall well-being. Both baseline and follow-up surveys collect self-reported data on health, physical functioning, and biomarkers. Anthropometric measurements for every age-eligible respondent, including height, weight, and waist circumference, were collected. We also collected lung capacity, grip strength, a series of balance tests, and a timed walk. Our results show significant health benefits associated with the additional income. Relative to the control site, there was a statistically significant improvement in lung function and an improvement in memory. These improvements are equivalent to a reduction in age of 5–10 y. Residents used their extra income to go to the doctor, buy their medications, and alleviate their hunger. The fear that this extra income could be undone by reduced transfers from other family members or unwise expenditures by the poor elderly appears to be unfounded.
Learning robot grasping from 3-D images with Markov Random Fields

Learning to grasp novel objects is an essential skill for robots operating in unstructured environments. We therefore propose a probabilistic approach for learning to grasp. In particular, we learn a function that predicts the success probability of grasps performed on surface points of a given object. Our approach is based on Markov Random Fields (MRF), and motivated by the fact that points that are geometrically close to each other tend to have similar grasp success probabilities. The MRF approach is successfully tested in simulation, and on a real robot using 3-D scans of various types of objects. The empirical results show a significant improvement over methods that do not utilize the smoothness assumption and classify each point separately from the others.
Molecular genetic typing of Staphylococcus aureus from cows, goats, sheep, rabbits and chickens

THESIS 7910%%%%Staphylococcus aureus is an important pathogen of man causing a range of infections from boils, carbuncles and abscesses to more serious and life-threatening infections like endocarditis and osteomyelitis. S. aureus is also an important pathogen of animals. Bovine mastitis is one of the most important infectious diseases among dairy cattle worldwide resulting in several billion dollars of lost revenue to the dairy industry every year, with S. aureus being a common cause. Apart from mastitis in cows, sheep and goats, S. aureus can cause septicaemia, lameness and skeletal infections such as osteomyelitis in commercial broiler flocks. In rabbits S. aureus can infect small dermal lesions and invade subcutaneous tissue causing staphylococcosis.
A COMPARISON OF FOUR DIFFERENT METHODS FOR OUTLIER DETECTION IN BIOEQUIVALENCE STUDIES

ABSTRACT Bioequivalence studies, required by law whenever a new formulation of an existing drug product is introduced to the market, are designed to test whether the bioavailability, defined as the rate and extent to which a substance reaches systemic circulation, is equivalent for each of two or more formulations. Detection and treatment of outlying data in bioequivalence studies are practically important, because inclusion or deletion of potential outlying data may lead to a different conclusion concerning bioequivalence. A review of the literature reveals that four different methods have been proposed for detecting outliers in bioavailability/bioequivalence studies. We present the results of an extensive computer simulation testing the small sample performance of these four testing methods, the results of which indicate that one of these, the estimates distance test, is substantially more powerful than the alternatives.
Efficient Selection and Monitoring of QoS-Aware Web Services with the WS-QoS Framework

While the concept of UDDI supports the automatic discovery of services implementing a common public tModel interface, there have been only few attempts to find a standardized form to describe the quality of service (QoS) properties of Web services. We introduce our approach "Web service QoS (WS-QoS)" that enables an efficient, dynamic, and QoS-aware selection and monitoring of Web services. The prototype of our approach is implemented with the . NET technology, including the following components: a WS-QoS Editor for the specification of QoS properties, a WS-QoS Requirement Manager for retrieving QoS requirements specified by client applications, a Web service broker for an efficient and QoS-aware selection of Web service offers, and a WS-QoS Monitor for checking the compliance of the service offers.
Illustrating the Production of the International Phonetic Alphabet Sounds Using Fast Real-Time Magnetic Resonance Imaging

Recent advances in real-time magnetic resonance imaging (rtMRI) of the upper airway for acquiring speech production data provide unparalleled views of the dynamics of a speaker’s vocal tract at very high frame rates (83 frames per second and even higher). This paper introduces an effort to collect and make available on-line rtMRI data corresponding to a large subset of the sounds of the world’s languages as encoded in the International Phonetic Alphabet, with supplementary English words and phonetically-balanced texts, produced by four prominent phoneticians, using the latest rtMRI technology. The technique images oral as well as laryngeal articulator movements in the production of each sound category. This resource is envisioned as a teaching tool in pronunciation training, second language acquisition, and speech therapy.
Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution Cc by Text Localization and Recognition in Real-time Scene Images

An end-to-end text localization and detection is a much truer form of text extraction in image analysis if it can be harnessed efficiently. In this paper, a robust system to detect text from scene images is proposed. The text is extracted when image goes through multiple pre-processing stages. The method uses connected component (CC), Extremal Regions(ER) and sliding window concept. A set of rules and mathematical operations have been devised to extract actual text regions from background. Various techniques that are used to accurately localize text from scene images are implemented using HOG and stroke detection. Finally, text is recognized in an OCR stage of character recognition based on gradient direction feature and trained using synthetic fonts.
Topic-based browsing within a digital library using keyphrases

Many digital libraries are comprised of documents from disparate sources that are independent of the rest of the collection in which they reside. A userÕs ability to explore is severely curtailed when each document stands in isolation; there is no way to navigate to other, related, documents, or even to tell if such documents exist. We describe a method for automatically introducing topicÐbased links into documents to support browsing in digital libraries. Automatic keyphrase extraction is exploited to identify link anchors, and keyphraseÐbased similarity measures are used to select and rank destinations. Two implementations are described: one that applies these techniques to existing WWWÐbased digital library collections using standard HTML, and one that uses a wider range of interface techniques to provide more sophisticated linking capabilities. An evaluation shows that keyphraseÐbased similarity measures work as well as a popular full-text retrieval system for finding relevant destination documents.