Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Quantitative Analysis of tpr Gene Expression in Treponema pallidum Isolates: Differences among Isolates and Correlation with T-Cell Responsiveness in Experimental Syphilis

ABSTRACT Transcriptional analysis of the tpr genes in Treponema pallidum subsp. pallidum (referred to here as simply T. pallidum) has been limited to date, and yet the expression of members of this gene family is likely relevant to the pathogenesis of syphilis. Recently, immunological studies and semiquantitative mRNA analysis led to the hypothesis of the modulation of tpr gene transcription during infection and suggested that various strains of T. pallidum might differentially express these genes. In this study we developed a real-time amplification assay to quantify the tpr mRNAs with respect to the 47-kDa lipoprotein message and to compare transcript levels among four different strains of T. pallidum. In addition, we analyzed the lymphocyte responsiveness pattern toward the Tpr antigens in late experimental syphilis to identify tpr genes that had been expressed during the course of infection. The T-cell response has been implicated in clearance of treponemes from early lesions, and some of the Tprs were identified as strong targets of the cellular immune response. We show that message for many of the tpr genes can be detected in treponemes harvested at the peak of early infection. Interestingly, tprK seems to be preferentially expressed in almost every strain, and it is uniformly the target of the strongest cellular immune response. These studies demonstrate the differential expression of certain tpr genes among strains of T. pallidum, and further studies are needed to explore the relationship between tpr gene expression and the clinical course of syphilis in infected individuals.
A Lexicon of Conflict under Concertive Control Conditions

While much of the literature on teamworking has become focused on employer-driven design of work teams, this article casts a critical eye on employee-driven workgroups through the examination of a selfselected and autonomous employee group. The evidence from this case study suggests that groupworking can result in a quest for homogenization, and in strong informal controls on members’ behaviours, where these controls operate through covert confiict expressions, mediated by the work environment. The evidence to emerge indicates that some of the suggested positive impacts on employees of groupworking may be simply surface constructs, while covert, suppressed confiicts persist. The unique contribution of this study is the modelling of a lexicon of confiict under concertive control conditions and the integration of social identity theory into a groupwork framework.
Synapsen markieren zum Konsolidieren

Die Groshirnrinde (Neokortex) und der Hippocampus sind die fur das Langzeitgedachtnis wichtigsten Gehirnstrukturen. In der Gehirnrinde eintreffende Informationen werden in einigen hundert spezialisierten Modulen des Neokortex auf unterschiedlichen Ebenen der Komplexitat landkartenformig reprasentiert, das heist, externe Informationen fuhren zu Erregungen in einzelnen Bereichen von beispielsweise Farbkarte oder Frequenzkarte, Gesichterkarte oder Wortlautkarte sowie weiteren visuellen und akustischen Karten, um nur zwei Modalitaten zu nennen. Multimodale Areale, die nicht mehr auf eine Sinnesmodalitat spezialisiert sind, sondern allgemeine Aspekte der auseren Welt verarbeiten, wie beispielsweise den Ort eines Geschehens oder dessen Wert fur uns bereiten Entscheidungen vor, die durch Weitergabe der verarbeiteten Informationen an motorische Module in Verhalten umgesetzt werden. Der Hippocampus ist ein kleines Modul, das Verbindungen zu sehr vielen neokortikalen Bereichen hat und dadurch eine Art Gesamteindruck des jeweils im Neokortex vorliegenden Aktivierungsmusters als Input erhalt. Durch die Eigenart seiner Organisation, die man bereits vor 40 Jahren als „Autoassoziator“ modelliert hat (18, 23, 32), verbindet der Hippocampus die in ihm abgebildeten kortikalen Aktivierungen, die einem bestimmten Ereignis oder einem bestimmten Faktum entsprechen. Damit befindet sich die Reprasentation der „Gedachtnisspur“ eines Ereignisses, auch wenn dieses letztlich als Produkt der Aktivierung des Neokortex zu sehen ist, zunachst einmal vor allem im Hippocampus. Glaubte man fruher, dass der Hippocampus vor allem zur Speicherung von Orten im Raum dient, ist durch eine Reihe von Experimenten heute geklart, dass er jegliche Art von Fakten und Ereignissen lernen kann, ganz gleich, ob raumlich oder nicht (26).
Distributed asymmetric verification in computational grids

Lucrative incentives in grid computing do not only attract honest participants, but also cheaters. To prevent selfish behavior, verification mechanisms are required. Today's solutions mostly base on redundancy and inherently exhibit a considerable overhead. Often, however, the verification of a result takes much less time than its computation. In this paper we propose a distributed checking scheme that exploits this asymmetry. Our mechanism detects wrong results and excludes cheaters in a distributed manner and hence disburdens the central of the grid server. We show how the verification scheme is used in an application which aims at breaking the discrete logarithm problem by a parallel implementation of the Pollard-p algorithm. Our implementation extends the BOINC server software and is robust to various rational attacks even in the presence of colluders.
Comparing face to face, tutor led discussion and online discussion in the classroom

This study explores the relative effectiveness of in class online discussion and face to face, tutor led discussion in preservice teachers' recall of concepts. Two groups of preservice teachers, who engaged in different discussion modes, were tested two weeks later on how many concepts they could recall. No significant difference in the recall score was found between the two groups, but the group involved with the in-class discussions using a threaded discussion tool achieved a slightly higher mean score in the recall of multimedia design concepts. The online group completed a survey questionnaire on their perception of their use of online discussion. The majority perceived that they learned more online. The preservice teachers also indicated the mode of discussions that they preferred and the reasons for their choice. Half preferred to participate in in-class online discussions, rather than face to face, tutor led discussion, during class time. The findings suggested that educators and learners may choose either in-class online discussion or face to face, tutor led discussion without fear of significant disadvantages to learning.
Dose of hemodialysis and survival: differences by race and sex.

CONTEXT Although blacks receive lower doses of hemodialysis than whites, their survival when receiving dialysis treatment is better than that for whites. Previous studies of the relationship between the dose of dialysis and patient survival have not controlled for differences in patient characteristics. OBJECTIVE To examine the association of mortality with the dose of hemodialysis for clusters of patients categorized by race and sex. DESIGN Retrospective analysis of laboratory data and mortality outcomes from 1994, using a national database of hemodialysis patients. PATIENTS A total of 18144 black and white patients receiving hemodialysis 3 times weekly who either lived the entire year receiving hemodialysis or died. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES The fractional reduction of urea in a single dialysis session as the measured hemodialysis dose (urea reduction ratio [URR]) after controlling for race, sex, age, and diabetes mellitus. Mortality was determined by strata of URRs and albumin and creatinine levels. RESULTS Across all age categories, blacks had lower URRs than whites, and men had lower URRs than women. In an age-adjusted model for evaluating interactions among URRs, race, sex, and diabetes, the association of URR with mortality risk was weak among blacks, particularly black men. After adjustment for age and diabetes, death probability curves were most steep for white women with URR values less than 60%. The death probability curves were least steep for black men. There was no meaningful difference between death probability and albumin or creatinine concentration among the race by sex clusters. CONCLUSION Using URR, the usual measure of hemodialysis dose, the assumption that the association between dialysis dose and survival is uniform across demographic groups appears incorrect. Comparisons of the quality of dialysis patient care should not rely on URR alone to predict patient survival.
A Typology of Requisite Skills for Information Technology Professionals

Based on qualitative and quantitative analysis of data gathered in structured interviews with 96 IT managers and executives, this paper proposes a typology of IT skills. The resulting typology is comprehensive enough to represent both current and future skills, concise enough to do so in a parsimonious and easily understood manner, consistent with general themes from prior research, and generalizable enough to accommodate future changes in the field.
Ecology: The Moment of Truth - An Introduction

It is impossible to exaggerate the environmental problem facing humanity in the twenty-first century. Nearly fifteen years ago one of us observed: "We have only four decades left in which to gain control over our major environmental problems if we are to avoid irreversible ecological decline. "1 Today, with a quarter-century still remaining in this projected time line, it appears to have been too optimistic. Available evidence now strongly suggests that under a regime of business as usual we could be facing an irrevocable "tipping point" with respect to climate change within a mere decade.2 Other crises such as species extinction (percentages of bird, mammal, and fish species "vulnerable or in immediate danger of extinction" are "now measured in double digits");3 the rapid depletion of the oceans' bounty; desertification; deforestation; air pollution; water shortages/pollution; soil degradation; the imminent peaking of world oil production (creating new geopolitical tensions); and a chronic world food crisis—all point to the fact that the planet as we know it and its ecosystems are stretched to the breaking point. The moment of truth for the earth and human civilization has arrivedThis article can also be found at the Monthly Review website, where most recent articles are published in full.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.
Toward a Formal Evaluation of Refactorings

Refactoring is a software development strategy that characteristically alters the syntactic structure of a program without changing its external behavior [2]. In this talk we present a methodology for extracting formal models from programs in order to evaluate how incremental refactorings affect the verifiability of their structural specifications. We envision that this same technique may be applicable to other types of properties such as those that concern the design and maintenance of safety-critical systems.
Controllability and observability of nonlinear systems

Two of the fundamental concepts appearing in the earlier studies on linear control systems are controllability and observability. In particular, it was through the work of R.E. Kalman that the notion of controllability of a linear system was shown to be of interest in itself, and not only as it was appearing in the context of optimal control. Linear controllability turns out to be of importance in many contexts, with perhaps as one of the most useful applications, feedback stabilization or rather pole placement through state feedback. On the other hand, controllability has a very simple and appealing formulation in that a linear control system is said to be controllable if for any given pair of initial and final states there exists an input function that ‘steers’ the system from initial to final state.
Physical attachment of fluorescent protein particles to atomic force microscopy probes in aqueous media: Implications for surface pH, fluorescence, and mechanical properties studies

Transfer of a fluorescently labeled protein particle from a surface to a microsized scanning probe has been induced by repetitive scanning in aqueous medium. The so‐attached particle can in turn act as a probing tool to study particle–substrate and particle–particle interactions. Attachment of the fluorescent particle occurs at the apical region of an atomic force microscope (AFM) cantilever tip and it endures repetitive loading–unloading cycles against the sample surface. Fluorescence microscopy has been used to address the exact location of the attached particle in the cantilever and to identify the moment when the particle contacts the sample. Moreover, we have observed that fluorescence intensity at the contact point is lower when the probing particle contacts another fluorescent particle than when it contacts the nonfluorescent substrate. The change in fluorescence is attributed to local changes of pH and interparticle‐quenching of fluorophores in the contact region. These findings are promising since they constitute a chemical‐free way to attach bioparticles to AFM probes under fisiological conditions. The atomic force microscopy combined with fluorescence microscopy provides a straight forward method to study particle/particle and particle/substrate interactions, as well as to investigate mechanical properties of biocolloids. Microsc. Res. Tech. 73:746–751, 2010. © 2009 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Hand Reaching Movement Acquired through Reinforcement Learning

This paper shows that a system with two-link arm can obtain hand reaching movement to a target object projected on a visual sensor by reinforcement learning using a layered neural network. The reinforcement signal, which is an only signal from the environment, is given to the system only when the hand reaches the target object. The neural network computes two joint torques from visual sensory signals, joint angles, and joint angular velocities considering the arm dynamics. It is known that the trajectory of the voluntary movement of human hand reaching is almost straight, and the hand velocity changes like bell-shape. Although there are some exceptions, the properties of the trajectories obtained by the reinforcement learning are somewhat similar to the experimental result of the human hand reaching movement.
Live three-dimensional paediatric intraoperative epicardial echocardiography as a guide to surgical repair of atrioventricular valves

Real-time three dimensional echocardiography is increasingly used for imaging patients with congenital cardiac malformations. One of the limitations of a transthoracic approach is that intervening structures can impact on the quality of the images obtained. We hypothesised that, during surgery, epicardial three-dimensional echocardiography would provide images of high quality. We report our findings in eight children or young adults, with weights ranging from 2.8 to 70 kilograms, in whom we used this approach. In all cases, we obtained images of good quality, which could be analysed rapidly in the operating room. Of the eight cases, seven had echocardiographic findings which matched exactly the surgical findings. The remaining child had been diagnosed echocardiographically with a cleft in the aortic leaflet of the mitral valve, but was found at surgery to have a double orifice in the valve.
Cross‐talk between Notch and Hedgehog regulates hepatic stellate cell fate in mice

Liver repair involves phenotypic changes in hepatic stellate cells (HSCs) and reactivation of morphogenic signaling pathways that modulate epithelial‐to‐mesenchymal/mesenchymal‐to‐epithelial transitions, such as Notch and Hedgehog (Hh). Hh stimulates HSCs to become myofibroblasts (MFs). Recent lineage tracing studies in adult mice with injured livers showed that some MFs became multipotent progenitors to regenerate hepatocytes, cholangiocytes, and HSCs. We studied primary HSC cultures and two different animal models of fibrosis to evaluate the hypothesis that activating the Notch pathway in HSCs stimulates them to become (and remain) MFs through a mechanism that involves an epithelial‐to‐mesenchymal–like transition and requires cross‐talk with the canonical Hh pathway. We found that when cultured HSCs transitioned into MFs, they activated Hh signaling, underwent an epithelial‐to‐mesenchymal–like transition, and increased Notch signaling. Blocking Notch signaling in MFs/HSCs suppressed Hh activity and caused a mesenchymal‐to‐epithelial–like transition. Inhibiting the Hh pathway suppressed Notch signaling and also induced a mesenchymal‐to‐epithelial–like transition. Manipulating Hh and Notch signaling in a mouse multipotent progenitor cell line evoked similar responses. In mice, liver injury increased Notch activity in MFs and Hh‐responsive MF progeny (i.e., HSCs and ductular cells). Conditionally disrupting Hh signaling in MFs of bile‐duct–ligated mice inhibited Notch signaling and blocked accumulation of both MF and ductular cells. Conclusions: The Notch and Hedgehog pathways interact to control the fate of key cell types involved in adult liver repair by modulating epithelial‐to‐mesenchymal–like/mesenchymal‐to‐epithelial–like transitions. (Hepatology 2013;58:1801–1813)
Differential c-Fos Expression in Cholinergic, Monoaminergic, and GABAergic Cell Groups of the Pontomesencephalic Tegmentum after Paradoxical Sleep Deprivation and Recovery

Multiple lines of evidence indicate that neurons within the pontomesencephalic tegmentum are critically involved in the generation of paradoxical sleep (PS). From single-unit recording studies, evidence suggests that unidentified but “possibly” cholinergic tegmental neurons discharge at higher rates during PS than during slow wave sleep or even waking and would thus play an active role, whereas “presumed” monoaminergic neurons cease firing during PS and would thus play a permissive role in PS generation. In the present study performed on rats, c-Fos immunostaining was used as a reflection of neuronal activity and combined with immunostaining for choline acetyltransferase (ChAT), serotonin (Ser), tyrosine hydroxylase (TH), or glutamic acid decarboxylase (GAD) for immunohistochemical identification of active neurons during PS recovery (∼28% of recording time) as compared with PS deprivation (0%) and PS control (∼15%) conditions. With PS recovery, there was a significant increase in ChAT+/c-Fos+ cells, a significant decrease in Ser+/c-Fos+ and TH+/c-Fos+ cells, and a significant increase in GAD+/c-Fos+ cells. Across conditions, the percent PS was correlated positively with tegmental cholinergic c-Fos+ cells, negatively with raphe serotonergic and locus coeruleus noradrenergic c-Fos+ cells, and positively with codistributed and neighboring GABAergic c-Fos+ cells. These results support the hypothesis that cholinergic neurons are active, whereas monoaminergic neurons are inactive during PS. They moreover indicate that GABAergic neurons are active during PS and could thus be responsible for inhibiting neighboring monoaminergic neurons that may be essential in the generation of PS.
Conceptual Methods for Identifying Needs of Mobile Network Subscribers

The paper is devoted to methods for identifying payment plans and services by mobile operators which are the best for the given subscribers. We base our research on the model-theoretic approach to domain formalization. We use Formal Concept Analysis for processing the mobile subscriber data. An Ontological Model of the domain “Mobile Networks” is constructed in the scope of this research. The Ontological Model of the domain is constructed by integration of data extracted from depersonalized subscriber profiles. The signature of this Ontological Model contains unary predicates which describe subscriber behavior and features of payment plans and services. We consider formal contexts where objects are subscriber models and attributes are formulas of predicate logic. We investigate concept lattices and association rules of these formal contexts. Knowledge about optimal payment plans and services for a given subscriber is generated automatically with the help of the association rules.
The House of Make-Believe: Children's Play and the Developing Imagination

In the most thorough attempt to cover all aspects of children's make-believe, Dorothy and Jerome Singer examine how imaginative play begins and develops, from the infant's first smiles to the toddler's engagement in social pretend play. They provide intriguing examples and research evidence on the young child's invocation of imaginary friends, the adolescent's daring, rule-governed games, and the adult's private imagery and inner thought. In chapters that will be important to parents and policymakers, the authors discuss television and the imagination, the healing function of play, and the effects of playfulness and creativity throughout the life span.
Full-duplex relaying under I/Q imbalance using improper Gaussian signaling

In this paper, we study the benefits of employing improper Gaussian signaling (IGS) in full duplex relaying (FDR) suffering from in-phase and quadrature imbalance (IQI). Different from the traditional symmetric signaling scheme, proper Gaussian signaling (PGS), that is parametrized by its variance, IGS needs additional statistical-quantity called the pseudo-variance to be fully described. The cooperative system under consideration suffers from two types of interferences, the residual self-interference (RSI) and IQI. To evaluate the system performance gain using IGS, first we express the end-to-end achievable rate for different IQI. Then, we optimize the pseudo-variance to compensate the interferences impact and improve the end-to-end achievable rate. Interestingly, IGS-based scheme outperforms its counterpart PGS-based scheme, especially at higher interference-to-noise ratio. Our findings reveal that using single-user detection with asymmetric signaling can compensate both RSI and IQI and improve the system performance.
Grammatical Relations in Tariana

This article deals with the marking of grammatical relations in Tariana, North-Arawakan, and how this marking interrelates with topicality, definiteness and other discourse characteristics of nominal constituents. The following four case-marking systems are distinguished in Tariana: (i) a subject vs object case system, used with personal pronouns with animate reference; (ii) a case system characterized by an enclitic -nuku for marking topicalized and referential non-subjects, used with all types of nominal constituents; (iii) an ergative case-marking used with all types of nominal constituents under emphasis in A function, the ergative case marker being the same as instrumental; (iv) a system of peripheral cases – locative and instrumental, used with all types of nominal constituents, but obligatory only with pronouns. The overt case-marking in Tariana is related to such parameters as topicality, definiteness and emphasis, and consequently is dependent on the structure of discourse. I will argue that the unusual case-marking patterns in Tariana corroborate cross-linguistic generalizations on a dependency between case-marking and topical properties of NPs in languages with an opposition between marked and unmarked case forms.