Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Unique structure and function of chloride transporting CLC proteins

CLC proteins are a large structurally defined family of Cl/sup -/ ion channels and H/sup +//Cl/sup -/ antiporters with nine distinct genes in mammals. The membrane-embedded part of CLC proteins bears no obvious similarity to any other class of membrane proteins, while the cytoplasmic C-terminus of most eukaryotic and some prokaryotic CLCs contains two regions with homology to cystathionine beta synthase (CBS) domains that are found in other proteins as well. Different members serve a broad range of physiological roles, including stabilization of the membrane potential, transepithelial ion transport, and vesicular acidification. Their physiological importance is underscored by the causative involvement in at least four different human genetic diseases. From functional studies of the Torpedo homologue ClC-0, a homodimeric architecture with two physically separate ion conduction pathways was anticipated and fully confirmed by solving the crystal structure of prokaryotic CLC homologues. The structure revealed a complex fold of 18 /spl alpha/-helices per subunit with at least two Cl/sup -/ ions bound in the center of each protopore. A critical glutamic acid residue was identified whose side-chain seems to occupy a third Cl/sup o/n binding site in the closed state and that moves away to allow Cl/sup i/nding. While the overall architecture and pore structure is certainly conserved from bacteria to humans, the bacterial proteins that were crystallized are actually not Cl/sup -/ ion channels, but coupled H/sup +//Cl/sup $/antiporters. These recent breakthroughs will allow us to study in further detail the structure, function, and the physiological and pathophysiological role of CLC proteins.
L-Band Relative Permittivity of Organic Soil Surface Layers - A New Dataset of Resonant Cavity Measurements and Model Evaluation

Global surface soil moisture products are derived from passive L-band microwave satellite observations. The applied retrieval algorithms include dielectric models (relating soil water content to relative permittivity) developed for mineral soils. First efforts to generate equivalent models for areas where organic surface layers are present such as in the high-latitude regions have recently been undertaken. The objective of this study was to improve our still insufficient understanding of L-band emission of organic substrates in prospect of enhancing soil moisture estimations in the high latitudes undergoing most rapid climatic changes. To this end, L-band relative permittivity measurements using a resonant cavity were carried out on a wide range of organic surface layer types collected at different sites. This dataset was used to evaluate two already existing models for organic substrates. Some samples from underlying mineral layers were considered for comparison. In agreement with theory the bulk relative permittivity measured in organic substrate was decreased due to an increased bound water fraction (where water molecules are rotationally hindered) compared to the measured mineral material and corresponding output of the dielectric model for mineral soils used in satellite algorithms. No distinct differences in dielectric response were detected in the measurements from various organic layer types, suggesting a generally uniform L-band emission behavior. This made it possible to fit a simple empirical model to the data obtained from all collected organic samples. Outputs of the two existing models both based on only one organic surface layer type were found to lie within the spread of our measured data, and in close proximity to the derived simple model. This general consensus strengthened confidence in the validity of all these models. The simple model should be suitable for satellite soil moisture retrieval applications as it is calibrated on a wide range of organic substrate types and the entire wetness range, and does not require any auxiliary input that may be difficult to obtain globally. This renders it generically applicable wherever organic surface layers are present.
Differential expression of conserved protease genes in crucifer-attacking pathovars of Xanthomonas campestris

Strains of Xanthomonas campestris pathovars armoraciae and raphani, which cause leaf spotting diseases in brassicas, produce a major extracellular protease in liquid culture which was partially purified. The protease (PRT 3) was a zinc-requiring metalloenzyme and was readily distinguishable from the two previously characterized proteases (PRT 1 and PRT 2) of X. campestris pv. campestris by the pattern of degradation of beta-casein and sensitivity to inhibitors. PRT 3 was produced at a low level in the vascular brassica pathogen X. campestris pv. campestris (five strains tested), in which PRT 1 and PRT 2 predominate. In contrast, expression of PRT 1, a serine protease, could not be detected in the six tested strains of the leaf spotting mesophyll pathogens. However, all these strains had DNA fragments which hybridized to a prtA probe and which probably carry a functional prtA (the structural gene for PRT 1). The structural gene for PRT 3 (prtC) was cloned by screening a genomic library of X. campestris pv. raphani in a protease-deficient X. campestris pv. campestris strain. Subcloning and Tn5 mutagenesis located the structural gene to 1.2 kb of DNA. DNA fragments which hybridized to the structural gene were found in all strains of the crucifer-attacking X. campestris pathovars tested as well as in a number of other pathovars. Experiments in which the pattern of protease production of the pathovars was manipulated by introduction of cloned genes into heterologous pathovars suggested that no determinative relationship exists between the pattern of protease gene expression and the (vascular or mesophyllic) mode of pathogenesis.
Naming nations: Making nationalist claims in Canadian public discourse

En tant que mouvements sociaux, les mouvements nationalistes font le choix d'un ‘nom’, autour duquel ils creent leur identites collectives. Au Canada ces dernieres decennies les mouvements qui revendiquent les droits et les pouvoirs politiques aux noms des Quebecois et des peuples autochtones ont recompose l'univers de discours politique et la structure des possibilites politiques. Cet article maintient que le choix d'un nom a des consequences importantes. La selection d'un nom cree les ressources strategiques. A la suite de ces choix les revendications prennent forme, les allies et les adversaires se demarquent, et les cheminement des revendications a l'interieur de l'Etat suivent. Pour les approches theoriques des mouvements sociaux, l'importance de cette argumentation est la suivante: pour bien saisir la structure des possibilites politiques il faut chercher les acteurs et les noms qu'ils ont choisis pour s'identifier. Nationalist movements are social movements involved in the definition of a collective identity; they make choices about names. In the last few decades in Canada the universe of political discourse and the political opportunity structure have been reorganized in part because of the actions of movements claiming rights and governmental powers in the name of the Quebecois and Aboriginal peoples. This paper argues that self-naming by these movements involves four elements: it generates strategic resources; it defines some claims as meaningful and others as less relevant; it locates one community in relationship to allies and opponents; and it has consequences for routing claims through state institutions. The theoretical thrust of this argument for social movement analysis is that the configuration of the political opportunity structure cannot be grasped without first inquiring about who the actors are; choices of names configure the political opportunity structure. In fact, all communities larger than primordial villages of face-to-face contact (and perhaps even these) are imagined. Communities are to be distinguished, not by their falsity/genuineness, but by the style in which they are imagined (Anderson, 1991: 6).
Quadruple Burden of HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, Chronic Intestinal Parasitoses, and Multiple Micronutrient Deficiency in Ethiopia: A Summary of Available Findings

Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), tuberculosis (TB), and helminthic infections are among the commonest public health problems in the sub-Saharan African countries like Ethiopia. Multiple micronutrient deficiencies also known as the “hidden hunger” are common in people living in these countries either playing a role in their pathogenesis or as consequences. This results in a vicious cycle of multiple micronutrient deficiencies and infection/disease progression. As infection is profoundly associated with nutritional status resulting from decreased nutrient intake, decreased nutrient absorption, and nutrient losses, micronutrient deficiencies affect immune system and impact infection and diseases progression. As a result, micronutrients, immunity, and infection are interrelated. The goal of this review is therefore to provide a summary of available findings regarding the “quadruple burden trouble” of HIV, TB, intestinal parasitic infections, and multiple micronutrient deficiencies to describe immune-modulating effects related to disorders.
The Belfast Induced Natural Emotion Database

For many years psychological research on facial expression of emotion has relied heavily on a recognition paradigm based on posed static photographs. There is growing evidence that there may be fundamental differences between the expressions depicted in such stimuli and the emotional expressions present in everyday life. Affective computing, with its pragmatic emphasis on realism, needs examples of natural emotion. This paper describes a unique database containing recordings of mild to moderate emotionally colored responses to a series of laboratory-based emotion induction tasks. The recordings are accompanied by information on self-report of emotion and intensity, continuous trace-style ratings of valence and intensity, the sex of the participant, the sex of the experimenter, the active or passive nature of the induction task, and it gives researchers the opportunity to compare expressions from people from more than one culture.
Integrating Speech and Iconic Gestures in a Stroop-like Task: Evidence for Automatic Processing

Previous research has demonstrated a link between language and action in the brain. The present study investigates the strength of this neural relationship by focusing on a potential interface between the two systems: cospeech iconic gesture. Participants performed a Stroop-like task in which they watched videos of a man and a woman speaking and gesturing about common actions. The videos differed as to whether the gender of the speaker and gesturer was the same or different and whether the content of the speech and gesture was congruent or incongruent. The task was to identify whether a man or a woman produced the spoken portion of the videos while accuracy rates, RTs, and ERPs were recorded to the words. Although not relevant to the task, participants paid attention to the semantic relationship between the speech and the gesture, producing a larger N400 to words accompanied by incongruent versus congruent gestures. In addition, RTs were slower to incongruent versus congruent gesture–speech stimuli, but this effect was greater when the gender of the gesturer and speaker was the same versus different. These results suggest that the integration of gesture and speech during language comprehension is automatic but also under some degree of neurocognitive control.
Unprotected Anal Intercourse Between Potentially HIV‐Serodiscordant Men Who Have Sex With Men, San Francisco

Background: Increasing trends in high‐risk sexual behavior are noted among men who have sex with men (MSM) worldwide. Less information is available on unprotected sex between persons of different HIV serostatus. Methods: From 1999 through 2001, volunteers of a community‐based organization conducted interviews of 10,579 MSM at gay‐oriented venues in San Francisco and in neighborhoods with high‐volume MSM pedestrian traffic. The questionnaire recorded demographic and risk behavior information, including self‐reported and partners' HIV serostatus. Results: Potentially serodiscordant unprotected anal intercourse (UAI) with at least 2 anal sex partners was reported by 12.7% and increased from 11.0% in 1999 to 16.2% in 2001. Stratifying by self‐reported HIV serostatus, 20.8% of HIV‐positive respondents, 12.1% of HIV‐negative respondents, and 13.4% of MSM who did not know or report their own HIV serostatus had potentially serodiscordant UAI. Older MSM of white race were more likely to report potentially serodiscordant UAI among HIV‐positive respondents, whereas younger MSM of white race were more likely to report potentially serodiscordant UAI among HIV‐negative respondents. Among those with unknown HIV serostatus, MSM of color were more likely to engage in potentially serodiscordant UAI. Conclusion: Recent increases in UAI among MSM in San Francisco are not only the result of increases in UAI between persons of the same HIV serostatus. Prevention messages must address disclosure of HIV serostatus to sexual partners specifically tailored to groups according to age, community, and HIV serostatus.
An Experience With Reflection for Scheduling Actor-Based Applications.

Several high-level programming models and languages have been designed for distributed or parallel systems programming. However, the exploitation of the computational power of these systems is a hard problem. In the area of high-performance computing, one of the most important problems is process scheduling [Casavant & Kuhl 88]. Scheduling of distributed computations is a resource allocation problem which consists in managing the potential parallelism in applications. The objective is, for example, to share or to balance the load — CPU and network — of the support, relatively to constraints like memory limitations or needs of particular resources. Global scheduling, or placement, answers to the question “where execute a process ? ” while local scheduling answers to “when execute a process ? ”. Most of the research works in the field focuses on the design of scheduling policies, and on experience and performance evaluation of them on different hardware supports. Nevertheless, another challenge is to deal with efficiency without complicating applications development, while preserving simplicity of high-level programming, readability of codes, and portability of applications on different architectures. So, software methods and mechanisms for integrating scheduling technics into high-level languages and into software development processes have to be designed. They must allow design, implementation and maintenance of efficient and portable distributed applications. Object-based concurrent programming offers a high degree of expressiveness for parallel applications, but their efficient scheduling requires specialized strategies. These strategies are all the more dynamic and difficult to implement since applications or hardware supports are irregular. Our purpose is to provide a convenient software methodology to get efficient executions of concurrent object-based programs. As reflection is a software method which offers a conceptual separation of the management level from the applicative level, it may be an interesting solution to separe and compose a program and a scheduling policy [Okamura & Ishikawa 94].
MODELLING SPEECH TEMPORAL STRUCTURE FOR ESTONIAN TEXT-TO-SPEECH SYNTHESIS: FEATURE SELECTION

The article discusses the principles of se lecting features for modelling the temporal structure of Estonian speech, using different types of read-out texts, with a view to text-to- speech synthesis (TTS). Feature selection is known to depend on certain general issues regulating speech temporal structure, as well as on some language specific aspects. The durational model of Estonian stands out for some foot-bound features (foot quantity degree, number of feet in the word) being included in the input. In addition to the traditional descriptors of sound context and hierarchical position the prediction of Estonian segmental durations requires information on some morphological, syntactic and lexical features of the word, such as word form, part of sentence, and part of speech. In the prediction of pauses in the speech flow the relevant features are: distance from sentence beginning and from the previous pause, the length and quantity degree of the preceding foot, and the occurrence of a punctuation mark or conjunction. Although expert opinions were used in feature selection, statistical methods should be applied to test the vector of optimal argument features.
Prevalence and classification of mild cognitive impairment in the Cardiovascular Health Study Cognition Study: part 1.

OBJECTIVE To examine the prevalence of mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and its diagnostic classification in the Cardiovascular Health Study (CHS) Cognition Study. DESIGN The CHS Cognition Study is an ancillary study of the CHS that was conducted to determine the presence of MCI and dementia in the CHS cohort. SETTING Multicenter population study. PATIENTS We examined 3608 participants in the CHS who had undergone detailed neurological, neuropsychological, neuroradiological, and psychiatric testing to identify dementia and MCI. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES The prevalence of MCI was determined for the whole cohort, and specific subtypes of MCI were examined in detail only at the Pittsburgh, Pa, center (n = 927). Mild cognitive impairment was classified as either MCI amnestic-type or MCI multiple cognitive deficits-type. RESULTS The overall prevalence of MCI was 19% (465 of 2470 participants); prevalence increased with age from 19% in participants younger than 75 years to 29% in those older than 85 years. The overall prevalence of MCI at the Pittsburgh center was 22% (130 of 599 participants); prevalence of the MCI amnesic-type was 6% and of the MCI multiple cognitive deficits-type was 16%. CONCLUSIONS Twenty-two percent of the participants aged 75 years or older had MCI. Mild cognitive impairment is a heterogeneous syndrome, where the MCI amnestic-type is less frequent than the MCI multiple cognitive deficits-type. Most of the participants with MCI had comorbid conditions that may affect their cognitive functions.
Genomic analysis of uncultured marine viral communities

Viruses are the most common biological entities in the oceans by an order of magnitude. However, very little is known about their diversity. Here we report a genomic analysis of two uncultured marine viral communities. Over 65% of the sequences were not significantly similar to previously reported sequences, suggesting that much of the diversity is previously uncharacterized. The most common significant hits among the known sequences were to viruses. The viral hits included sequences from all of the major families of dsDNA tailed phages, as well as some algal viruses. Several independent mathematical models based on the observed number of contigs predicted that the most abundant viral genome comprised 2–3% of the total population in both communities, which was estimated to contain between 374 and 7,114 viral types. Overall, diversity of the viral communities was extremely high. The results also showed that it would be possible to sequence the entire genome of an uncultured marine viral community.
Enabling wide deployment of GSM localization over heterogeneous phones

Wide deployment of GSM based location determination systems is a critical step towards moving existing systems to the real world. The main barrier towards this critical step is the heterogeneity of existing types of cell phones which results in different readings of received signal strength. Specially, in the context of fingerprinting localization where offline phases are needed for system training and different types of phones may be used in the offline and the online phases. Therefore, a mapping function, that maps the RSSI values between different types of cell phones, is inevitably needed. A trivial solution is to build a radio map for each type of phone. Obviously, this solution can neither scale in terms of number of phone types nor fingerprint size. In this paper, we address this problem by proposing the following two-way approach: A mathematical approach that maps RSSI values of different types of phones using linear transformation with regression, or logging ratios of readings instead of absolute values. We have empirically evaluated the proposed approach on Android-based phones. Our experimental results show that applying our approach can improve location accuracy with at least 127.84% in multiple cell tower configuration and at least 22.11% in the single cell tower configuration compared to the state-of-the-art GSM localization systems.
Expressive language profiles of verbally expressive adolescents and young adults with Down syndrome or fragile X syndrome.

PURPOSE In this study, the authors examined the expressive language abilities of a subset of highly verbally expressive adolescents and young adults with Down syndrome (DS) and those with fragile X syndrome (FXS) for evidence of syndrome-related differences. FXS gender differences were also examined in an exploratory fashion. METHOD The authors evaluated 24 adolescents and young adults with DS, 17 adolescents and young adults with FXS, and 21 children with typical development (TD), with the groups matched on nonverbal mental age. Language ability was examined using the Oral and Written Language Scales (OWLS; Carrow-Woolfolk, 1995) and Developmental Sentence Scoring (DSS; Lee, 1974) scores derived from an oral narrative language sample. RESULTS Study analyses revealed the following group differences: The FXS group outperformed the DS and TD groups on the OWLS measure; the TD group outperformed both other groups on some of the DSS measures; the FXS group outperformed the DS group on the DSS Sentence Point measure; and females with FXS outperformed males with FXS on several measures. CONCLUSIONS Results contribute to the ongoing construction of the language phenotypes of individuals with DS and individuals with FXS and support the conclusion that there are quantitative rather than qualitative differences in their expressive language profiles.
The Continuity Illusion Does Not Depend on Attentional State: fMRI Evidence from Illusory Vowels

We investigate whether the neural correlates of the continuity illusion, as measured using fMRI, are modulated by attention. As we have shown previously, when two formants of a synthetic vowel are presented in an alternating pattern, the vowel can be identified if the gaps in each formant are filled with bursts of plausible masking noise, causing the illusory percept of a continuous vowel (“Illusion” condition). When the formant-to-noise ratio is increased so that noise no longer plausibly masks the formants, the formants are heard as interrupted (“Illusion Break” condition) and vowels are not identifiable. A region of the left middle temporal gyrus (MTG) is sensitive both to intact synthetic vowels (two formants present simultaneously) and to Illusion stimuli, compared to Illusion Break stimuli. Here, we compared these conditions in the presence and absence of attention. We examined fMRI signal for different sound types under three attentional conditions: full attention to the vowels; attention to a visual distracter; or attention to an auditory distracter. Crucially, although a robust main effect of attentional state was observed in many regions, the effect of attention did not differ systematically for the illusory vowels compared to either intact vowels or to the Illusion Break stimuli in the left STG/MTG vowel-sensitive region. This result suggests that illusory continuity of vowels is an obligatory perceptual process, and operates independently of attentional state. An additional finding was that the sensitivity of primary auditory cortex to the number of sound onsets in the stimulus was modulated by attention.