Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Trafficking and Release of Mycobacterial Lipids from Infected Macrophages

Analysis of infected macrophages revealed that lipid‐containing moieties of the mycobacterial cell wall are actively trafficked out of the mycobacterial vacuole. To facilitate the analysis of vesicular trafficking from mycobacteria‐containing phagosomes, surface‐exposed carbohydrates were labeled with hydrazide‐tagged markers. The distribution of labeled carbohydrate/lipid moieties and subsequent interaction with cellular compartments were analyzed by immunoelectron microscopy and by fluorescence microscopy of live cells. The released mycobacterial constituents were associated with several intracellular organelles and were enriched strikingly in tubular endocytic compartments. Subcellular fractionation of infected macrophages by density gradient electrophoresis showed temporal movement of labeled bacterial constituents through early and late endosomes. Thin layer chromatography analysis of these subcellular fractions confirmed their lipid nature and revealed five dominant bacteria‐derived species. These mycobacterial lipids were also found in extracellular vesicles isolated from the medium and could be observed in un‐infected ‘bystander’ cells. Their transfer to bystander cells could expand the bacteria's sphere of influence beyond the immediate confines of the host cell.
Effects of aging on the responsiveness of the human cardiac sympathetic nerves to stressors.

BACKGROUND Aging increases human sympathetic nervous activity at rest. Beause of the probable importance of neural stress responses in the heart as triggers for clinical end points of coronary artery disease, it is pertinent to investigate whether sympathetic nervous responses to stresses are increased by aging. METHODS AND RESULTS We applied kinetic methods for measuring the fluxes to plasma of neurochemicals relevant to sympathetic neurotransmission in younger (aged 20 to 30 years) and older (aged 60 to 75 years) healthy men during mental stress (difficult mental arithmetic), isometric exercise (sustained handgrip), and dynamic exercise (supine cycling). The increase in total norepinephrine spillover to plasma with mental stress was unaffected by age. In contrast, the increase in cardiac norepinephrine spillover was two to three times higher in the older subjects (P < .05). The probable mechanism of this higher cardiac norepinephrine spillover was reduced neuronal reuptake of the transmitter, because age had no influence on the overflow of the norepinephrine precursor, dihydroxyphenylalanine, or intraneuronal metabolite, dihydroxyphenylglycol (levels of these two substances reflect rates of cardiac norepinephrine synthesis and intraneuronal metabolism), and the transcardiac extraction of plasma radiolabeled norepinephrine was lower in the older subjects (P < .05). An almost identical pattern of neurochemical response was seen with isometric exercise. During cycling, total norepinephrine spillover was 16% lower in the older men, but cardiac norepinephrine spillover was 53% higher. CONCLUSIONS Reduced norepinephrine reuptake increases the overflow of the neurotransmitter to plasma from the aging heart during stimulation of the cardiac sympathetic outflow. Failure of transmitter inactivation at postjunctional receptors with aging would amplify the neural signal, and in the presence of myocardial disease could trigger adverse stress-induced cardiovascular events, particularly when accompanied by an age-dependent reduction in vagal tone. Reduction of postsynaptic adrenergic responsiveness with aging, however, might protect against this, as indicated by our finding that in no case was the heart rate increase during stress greater in older men, despite their having larger increases in cardiac norepinephrine spillover.
Regulation of tumor antigen synthesis by simain virus 40 gene A

Simian virus 40 gene A has previously been shown to promote the replication of viral DNA and the transcription of late viral RNA in productive infection and to maintain the growth characteristics of some transformed cells. The present study examines the effect of the A function on proteins synthesized during productive and transforming infections. Under restrictive conditions, temperature-sensitive A mutants induce the overproduction of a 100,000-dalton protein both in productively infected monkey cells and in transformed rabbit cells. Immunoprecipitation of the induced protein with antisera, prepared against simian virus 40-induced tumors in hamsters, was used to identify the induced protein as tumor antigen. The same protein can be precipitated from extracts of cells infected by wild-type virus but not from uninfected cells. Furthermore, the mutant-induced protein is more rapidly degraded in vivo and is less tightly bound to intranuclear components than the protein induced by wild-type virus. The presence of the same virus-induced protein in infected cells from different species and the altered behavior of that protein in mutant infection strongly suggest that the protein is virus coded. Because the protein is large enough to account for the entire coding capacity in the early region of the simian virus 40 genome, the 100,000-dalton protein may well be the primary product of the only early gene identified by complementation studies, the A gene. If the 100,000-dalton protein that is overproduced in mutant infection is the A protein and the only early protein, then functional wild-type A protein must regulate its own synthesis in both productive and transforming infections.
Tourism and income distribution in East Africa.

Research has highlighted the possibility that tourism expenditure in developing countries not only provides income for poor households, but also leads to contraction of other exporting industries. By highlighting the linkages between tourism-related industries and the rest of the economy, and through the distributional effects of their income flows, this paper examines the effects of tourism-related industries and other export industries on households in East Africa. Tourism-related industries are found to provide substantially less income for poorer households than other export activities, leading to concern that tourism expansion may be detrimental for poverty alleviation in these countries. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Plasmodium falciparum-like parasites infecting wild apes in southern Cameroon do not represent a recurrent source of human malaria

Wild-living chimpanzees and gorillas harbor a multitude of Plasmodium species, including six of the subgenus Laverania, one of which served as the progenitor of Plasmodium falciparum. Despite the magnitude of this reservoir, it is unknown whether apes represent a source of human infections. Here, we used Plasmodium species-specific PCR, single-genome amplification, and 454 sequencing to screen humans from remote areas of southern Cameroon for ape Laverania infections. Among 1,402 blood samples, we found 1,000 to be Plasmodium mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) positive, all of which contained human parasites as determined by sequencing and/or restriction enzyme digestion. To exclude low-abundance infections, we subjected 514 of these samples to 454 sequencing, targeting a region of the mtDNA genome that distinguishes ape from human Laverania species. Using algorithms specifically developed to differentiate rare Plasmodium variants from 454-sequencing error, we identified single and mixed-species infections with P. falciparum, Plasmodium malariae, and/or Plasmodium ovale. However, none of the human samples contained ape Laverania parasites, including the gorilla precursor of P. falciparum. To characterize further the diversity of P. falciparum in Cameroon, we used single-genome amplification to amplify 3.4-kb mtDNA fragments from 229 infected humans. Phylogenetic analysis identified 62 new variants, all of which clustered with extant P. falciparum, providing further evidence that P. falciparum emerged following a single gorilla-to-human transmission. Thus, unlike Plasmodium knowlesi-infected macaques in southeast Asia, African apes harboring Laverania parasites do not seem to serve as a recurrent source of human malaria, a finding of import to ongoing control and eradication measures.
Evaluation of a 100 A Current Shunt for the Direct Measurement of AC Current

This paper describes development and evaluation of a new coaxial current shunt for the nominal current of 100 A. The current shunt has been developed for both ac–dc transfer difference measurement and direct measurement of ac current. The direct ac measurement method was proposed by the Slovenian Institute of Quality and Metrology in 2002 and has now been expanded up to 100 A with the shunt described here. The forced air cooling system was implemented and evaluated to improve the shunt characteristics while keeping the current shunt resistors well within the safe operating range.
THE ROLE OF NEUTROPHILS IN SEVERE SEPSIS

Neutrophils are key effectors of the innate immune response. Reduction of neutrophil migration to infection sites is associated with a poor outcome in sepsis. We have demonstrated a failure of neutrophil migration in lethal sepsis. Together with this failure, we observed more bacteria in both peritoneal exudates and blood, followed by a reduction in survival rate. Furthermore, neutrophils obtained from severe septic patients displayed a marked reduction in chemotactic response compared with neutrophils from healthy subjects. The mechanisms of neutrophil migration failure are not completely understood. However, it is known that they involve systemic Toll-like receptor activation by bacteria and/or their products and result in excessive levels of circulating cytokines/chemokines. These mediators acting together with LPS stimulate expression of iNOS that produces high amounts of NO, which in turn mediates the failure of neutrophil migration. NO reduced expression of CXCR2 on neutrophils and the levels of adhesion molecules on both endothelial cells and neutrophils. These events culminate in decreased endothelium-leukocyte interactions, diminished neutrophil chemotactic response, and neutrophil migration failure. Additionally, the NO effect, at least in part, is mediated by peroxynitrite. In this review, we summarize what is known regarding the mechanisms of neutrophil migration impairment in severe sepsis.
Political Parties and Class Mobilization in Contemporary United States Elections

Research on historical and contemporary American party systems suggests how political party and party system attributes are relevant to class-specific mobilization. The more liberal and competitive the Democratic party in a state, the greater the mobilization of lower-class voters. Liberal and competitive Democratic parties will enhance turnout of the lower classes more than that of other classes. The latter relationships will be stronger in off year elections than in presidential elections. Pooled time-series and cross-sectional analyses of turnout are conducted by social class, state, and year for 1978 through 1990. The first two hypotheses about party attributes and class-specific mobilization are strongly supported, but only in presidential election years.
A Verifiable Sealed-Bid Multi-Qualitative-Attribute Based Auction Scheme in the Semi-Honest Model

Recently, several privacy–preserving auction schemes are proposed for protecting the bid privacy and securing the auction. In this paper, a sealed-bid auction scheme focusing on multi-attribute is presented. And it mainly concentrates on the security issues of multi-qualitative-attribute auction and utilizes the Pedersen commitment scheme to bind the bid information into commitment for strong bid privacy. In order to accomplish the public verifiable correctness, the buyers and sellers construct the zero-knowledge signatures of knowledge and publish them to the bulletin board. In accordance with the security analysis, major properties, strong bid privacy and public verifiability, are provided under the semi-honest model. According to a comparison of computation, the proposal’s computation cost is reasonable.
An Update on Connexin Genes and their Nomenclature in Mouse and Man

Gap junctions, composed of connexin protein subunits, allow direct communication through conduits between neighboring cells. Twenty and twenty-one members of the connexin gene family are likely to be expressed in the mouse and human genome, respectively, 19 of which can be grouped into sequence-orthologous pairs. Their gene structure appears to be relatively simple. In most cases, an untranslated exon1 is separated by an intron of different lengh from exon2 that includes the uninterrupted coding region and the 3′-untranslated region. However, there are several exceptions to this scheme, since some mouse connexin genes contain different 5′-untranslated regions spliced either in an alternative and/or consecutive manner. Additionally, in at least 3 mouse and human connexin genes (mCx36, mCx39, mCx57 and hCx31.3, hCx36, as well as hCx40.1) the reading frame is spliced together from 2 different exons. So far, there are two nomenclatures to classify the known connexin genes: The “Gja/Gjb” nomenclature, as it is currently adopted by the NCBI data base, contains some inconsistencies compared to the “Cx” nomenclature. Here we suggest some minor corrections to co-ordinate the “Gja/Gjb” nomenclature with the “Cx” nomenclature. Furthermore, this short review contains an update on phenotypic correlations between connexin deficient mice and patients bearing mutations in their orthologous connexin genes.
Monetary Policy and Fiscal Rules

This paper presents a Dynamic New Keynesian model with wealth effects to study the performance of monetary policy under Ricardian and non-Ricardian fiscal regimes. The model is calibrated to euro area quarterly data. The interactions between fiscal policy and interest rate rules have critical implications for equilibrium uniqueness. Within the class of Ricardian fiscal rules, active monetary policies are not necessary for equilibrium determinacy. However, monetary authorities overreacting to inflation not only improve macroeconomic performance, but also generate similar outcomes under different fiscal rules. Conversely, under non-Ricardian fiscal regimes, interest rate pegs are predicted to reduce inflation variability.
AIO robot: A EDI modular robotic dramatization platform

This article presents a logical architecture of a modular robotic platform oriented to dramatization that was implemented and tested in a robotic prototype. The theater play is controlled by a multi-agent system; a director agent synchronizes several robotic actors to perform a theater script. The architectural decisions of the actor agent are based on the BDI model which includes an emotional module that influences the way the agent performs actions. A centralized multi-agent protocol controls the simultaneous motion of several robotic actors. Furthermore, each actor agent has an intermediary module, called SOCA, connecting it with its sensor and action modules. The SOCA module makes flexible and transparent the communication and serves as coordinator and synchronizer; the aim is to make easier to modify the robot physical and logical configuration as required by an actor that must change accordingly to the represented character. A robotic prototype was implemented to validate this architecture and the communication scheme. It includes four modules: processing, mobility, audiovisual and manipulation. The basic experimental results show that the robot actor is well suited to perform drama scripts in educational contexts.
The effect of residual Nyquist ghost in quantitative echo‐planar diffusion imaging

Single‐shot diffusion‐weighted echo‐planar imaging (EPI) is typically used for most clinical diffusion studies due to its low sensitivity to patient motion. Although the Nyquist ghost artifact in EPI can be substantially reduced, there is frequently a residual ghost with low signal intensity. As reported in this study, this residual ghost can produce severe artifacts when maps of the apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) are calculated from single‐shot echo‐planar images. The artifacts presented in this paper appear as regions of apparently low ADC which simulate regions of reduced diffusion, but are in fact generated by b‐value dependent Nyquist ghosts of the orbits. Data acquired in vivo were used to demonstrate that these artifacts can be avoided by including standard methods of spatial presaturation or fluid‐suppression in the diffusion‐weighted EPI protocol. In addition, phantom studies were used to illustrate how phase and amplitude variations in the ghost generate the artifacts and theoretical expressions, derived elsewhere, were used to provide a detailed understanding of the artifacts observed in vivo. The level of Nyquist ghost reported for the current generation of commercial scanners suggests that this is a general phenomenon which should be a consideration in all EPI‐based diffusion studies. Magn Reson Med 42:385–392, 1999. © 1999 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
The challenge of international human resource management: balancing the duality of strategy and practice

Over the last two decades there has been an unprecedented increase in the number of organizations that have internationalized their operations. The international movement of labour that has been concomitant with such expansion of international business has meant that issues associated with the management of human resources across international borders are increasingly important to international human resource managers and academics. The research presented in this paper examines international human resource management (IHRM) pedagogy and practice in Australia. It reports IHRM academicians' and practitioners' understanding of the major issues for teaching and practice in IHRM and elucidates current developments and directions for this field.
The social component of mortality decline: an investigation in South India employing alternative methodologies.

It has previously been reported that mother's education exerts an influence on infant and child mortality that is independent both of the level of medical technology found in the society and of the family's access to it.1 This finding suggests that social change may have played an important role in the mortality transition and that social factors may explain the failure of health services to be more effective. Clearly an adequate investigation of this proposition means a study not only of mortality but of pre-existing morbidity, an area in which there has been only a limited development of research methodology. Since 1979 we have been testing the limits of the survey approach in a rural area of south India, and experimenting with the development of supplementary or alternative methods for collecting demographic information. These alternative approaches draw heavily on the methods of anthropology. The continuing work is a joint project of the Population Centre, Bangalore, and the Department of Demography, Australian National University. The original focus of the research had been on changes in marriage and control of marital fertility,2 but, given long periods of village residence, we had inevitably learnt much about the conditions of health, and by 1981 were in a position to concentrate our interest upon these matters. The work reported here was carried out in a rural area of southern Karnataka (once Mysore) 125 kilometres west of the city of Bangalore. The study population consisted of one large village with 2,557 inhabitants and eight smaller villages, ranging in size from 62 to 543 persons and totalling another 2,216 inhabitants. The area is traversed by a moderately important sealed road, but only the large village is right on it and most of the others are approached easily only by ox cart. The most distant of the small villages * This research constitutes part of a joint project of the Population Centre, Bangalore, India, and the Department of Demography, Australian National University. Most of the funding has come from the two institutions, but other support, especially for the analysis, has been provided by the Ford Foundation and by a Population Council International Research Award. The project has benefited from the research assistance of Pat Quiggin in Canberra, and also in Karnataka and/or Canberra from Wendy Cosford, Jennie Widdowson,
Adjusting for Unmeasured Confounders in Pharmacoepidemiologic Claims Data Using External Information: The Example of COX2 Inhibitors and Myocardial Infarction

Background: Large health care utilization datasets are frequently used to analyze the incidence of rare adverse events from medications. However, possible confounders are typically not measured in such datasets. We show how to assess the impact of confounding by factors not measured in Medicare claims data in a study of the association between selective COX2 inhibitors and acute myocardial infarction (MI). Methods: Using the Medicare Current Beneficiary Survey, we assessed the association between use of selective COX2 inhibitors and 5 potential confounders not measured in Medicare claims data: body-mass index, aspirin use, smoking, income, and educational attainment. For 8,785 participants ≥65 years, we estimated the prevalence of selective COX2 inhibitor use and also of each confounder, as well as the association between drug exposure and confounders. Estimates of the confounder-disease associations from the medical literature were used to calculate the extent of residual confounding bias for each potential confounder. Results: Selective COX2 inhibitor users were less likely to be smokers (8% versus 10%) than nonselective NSAID users, while the prevalence of obesity was comparable (24%). Aspirin use was also balanced among all drug exposure categories. Failure to adjust for 5 potential confounders led to a small underestimation of the association between selective COX2 inhibitors and MI; comparing selective COX2 inhibitors with NSAIDs, the net bias was estimated to be −1.0% of the unknown true effect size (maximum range: −6% to 0%). Conclusions: In this example of the relationship between selective COX2 inhibitors and MI, not adjusting for 5 potential confounders in Medicare claims data analyses tended to slightly underestimate the association, but is unlikely to cause important bias.
Short Baseline Neutrino Oscillations and a New Light Gauge Boson

12 pages, 4 figures. -- PACS number: 14.60. Pq. -- Submitted on 8 Nov 2007 (v1), last revised 21 Dec 2007 (this version, v3): References added, minor change to coupling constraints, expanded sections on astrophysical and cosmological constraints. -- Published in: Phys. Rev. D 77, 033001 (2008) (12 pages). -- Final full-text version of the paper available at: http://dx.doi. org/10.1103/PhysRevD.77. 033001.
Barriers to Networked Governments: Evidence from Europe 1

Abstract Progress towards realizing the full potential of ‘e‐government’—using digital technologies to improve public services and government–citizen engagements—has been slower and less effective than the technologies’ take‐up in spheres such as e‐commerce. Evidence from across Europe reported here, including an online survey and case studies, indicates a significant reason has been an overly narrow focus on substituting electronic for traditional services. Theoretical and empirical perspectives on barriers to e‐government identified (e.g. poor coordination; workplace and organizational inflexibility) suggest greater attention should be given to supporting organization innovations to achieve maximum benefits from networking in the public sector.