Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Pseudobacteraemia in a patient with neutropenic fever caused by a novel paenibacillus species: Paenibacillus hongkongensis sp. nov.

Aims: To characterise a strain of Gram negative aerobic straight or slightly curved rods (HKU3) isolated from the blood culture of a 9 year old Chinese boy with neutropenic fever and pseudobacteraemia. Methods: The isolate was phenotypically investigated by standard biochemical methods using conventional biochemical tests, scanning electron microscopy, and transmission electron microscopy. Genotypically, the 16S rRNA gene of the bacterium was amplified by the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and sequenced. The sequence of the PCR product was compared with known 16S rRNA gene sequences in the Genbank by multiple sequence alignment. The G + C content was determined by thermal denaturation. A phylogenetic tree was constructed by the PileUp method. Results: The cells of the bacterial strain were aerobic, sporulating, Gram negative straight or slight curved rods. The bacterium grew on horse blood agar as non-haemolytic, grey colonies of 1 mm in diameter after 24 hours of incubation at 37°C in ambient air. No enhancement of growth was seen in 5% CO2. It grew at 50°C as pinpoint colonies after 72 hours of incubation, but did not grow at 65°C or on MacConkey agar. It was non-motile. It produced catalase (weakly positive) and cytochrome oxidase. It reduced nitrate, produced β galactosidase, hydrolysed esculin, and utilised sodium acetate. A scanning electron micrograph of the bacterium showed straight or slightly curved rods. A transmission electron micrograph of the cell wall of the bacterium revealed multiple electron dense layers, including the outer membrane, middle murein layer, and inner cytoplasmic membrane, compatible with its Gram smear appearance. 16S rRNA gene sequencing showed that there were 7.7%, 8.0%, 8.2%, and 8.6% differences between the 16S rRNA gene sequence of the bacterium and those of Paenibacillus macerans, Paenibacillus borealis, Bacillus ehimensis, and Paenibacillus amylolyticus, respectively. The mean (SD) G + C content of the bacterium was 47.6 (2.1) mol%. Phylogenetically, it belongs to the genus paenibacillus (previously called group 3 bacillus). Conclusions: A bacterium that exhibited phenotypic and genotypic characteristics that are very different from closely related members of paenibacillus was the cause of pseudobacteraemia in a patient with neutropenic fever. A new species, Paenibacillus hongkongensis sp. nov. is proposed, for which HKU3 is the type strain.
Employee Performance Appraisal System Participation: A Technique That Works

Performance appraisal is one of the most complex and controversial human resource techniques. Participatory performance appraisal is an essential and proven attribute of an effective performance appraisal system. This article summarizes the conceptual foundation for participation including its intrinsic motivational value, the expansion of available information, and the opportunity to interject employee voice. The moderating role of goal setting and feedback in enhancing participation effectiveness is outlined. The article concludes with factors that attenuate the effectiveness of participation including lack of training, absence of rater accountability strategies, and organizational and supervisory resistance to honest subordinate feedback.
LOFAR, VLA, AND CHANDRA OBSERVATIONS OF THE TOOTHBRUSH GALAXY CLUSTER

We present deep LOFAR observations between 120 and 181 MHz of the “Toothbrush” (RX J0603.3+4214), a cluster that contains one of the brightest radio relic sources known. Our LOFAR observations exploit a new and novel calibration scheme to probe 10 times deeper than any previous study in this relatively unexplored part of the spectrum. The LOFAR observations, when combined with VLA, GMRT, and Chandra X-ray data, provide new information about the nature of cluster merger shocks and their role in re-accelerating relativistic particles. We derive a spectral index of &agr; = − 0.8 ± 0.1 ? > at the northern edge of the main radio relic, steepening toward the south to &agr; ≈ − 2 ? > . The spectral index of the radio halo is remarkably uniform ( &agr; = − 1.16 ? > , with an intrinsic scatter of ≤ 0.04 ? > ). The observed radio relic spectral index gives a Mach number of  = 2.8 − 0.3 + 0.5 ? > , assuming diffusive shock acceleration. However, the gas density jump at the northern edge of the large radio relic implies a much weaker shock (  ≈ 1.2 ? > , with an upper limit of  ≈ 1.5 ? > ). The discrepancy between the Mach numbers calculated from the radio and X-rays can be explained if either (i) the relic traces a complex shock surface along the line of sight, or (ii) if the radio relic emission is produced by a re-accelerated population of fossil particles from a radio galaxy. Our results highlight the need for additional theoretical work and numerical simulations of particle acceleration and re-acceleration at cluster merger shocks.
Higher heart rate variability is associated with vmPFC activity and increased resistance to temptation in dietary self-control challenges.

Higher levels of self-control in decision making have been linked to better psychosocial and physical health. A similar link to health outcomes has been reported for heart rate variability (HRV), a marker of physiological flexibility. Here, we sought to link these two, largely separate, research domains by testing the hypothesis that greater HRV would be associated with better dietary self-control in humans. Specifically, we examined whether total HRV at sedentary rest (measured as the standard deviation of normal-to-normal intervals, SDNN) can serve as a biomarker for the neurophysiological adaptability that putatively underlies self-controlled behavior. We found that HRV explained a significant portion of the individual variability in dietary self-control, with individuals having higher HRV being better able to down-regulate their cravings in the face of taste temptations. Furthermore, HRV was associated with activity patterns in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC), a key node in the brain's valuation and decision circuitry. Specifically, individuals with higher HRV showed both higher overall vmPFC BOLD activity and attenuated taste representations when presented with a dietary self-control challenge. Lastly, the behavioral and neural associations with HRV were consistent across both our stress induction and control experimental conditions. The stability of this association across experimental conditions suggests that HRV may serve as both a readily obtainable and robust biomarker for self-control ability across environmental contexts. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Self-control is associated with better health, but behavioral and psychometric self-control measures allow only indirect associations with health outcomes and may be distorted by reporting bias. We tested whether resting heart rate variability (HRV), a physiological indicator of psychological and physical health, can predict individual differences in dietary self-control in humans. We found that higher HRV was associated with better self-control and improved predictions of choice behavior. Specifically, higher HRV was associated with more effective down-regulation of taste temptations, and with a diminished neural representation of taste temptations during self-control challenges. Our results suggest that HRV may serve as an easily acquired, non-invasive and low-cost biomarker for self-control ability.
A Longitudinal Study of Factors Influencing Occupational Therapy Students' Practice Preference from Pre-Admission Through Job Selection

Abstract The number of occupational therapists and students choosing to practice in the area of mental health continues to decline. A longitudinal comparative study was conducted using a class of 27 Bachelor's and 20 Master's students, to examine the factors that influence the students' practice area preference at three points from pre-admission to job selection. The major influential factors were similar for both groups. At pre-admission, observation, volunteer work or a job in OT or a related field was reported to be the most influential factor in choosing a practice area preference. At level II fieldwork, positive influences on practice area preference were generally higher for physical disabilities, and negative influences were higher for mental health. At job selection, availability of a job and patient population were the most important influencing factors. Pre-admission experiences, level II fieldwork, and professionally challenging aspects of the practice area preference were the most important retrospective experiences influencing preference for practice area. In order to maintain or increase a presence in mental health the profession may need to expand OT students' pre-admission experiential expectations, professional mental health supports, and job opportunities in mental health.
Second language reading in fluent bilinguals

ABSTRACT Many bilinguals, who are fluent second language users in normal commmunicative situations, nevertheless read more slowly in that language. The present study examines whether this performance difference is specific to reading or whether its occurrence is accompanied by similar differences in the auditory modality. Fluent English and French bilinguals were required to adjust the delivery rate of spoken first and second language texts so as to maximize speed of delivery while maintaining full comprehension. The results showed that the pattern of listening rates for the second language relative to the first mirrored the pattern of reading rates. The results are discussed in terms of their implications for second language reading research.
Exploring Technology Integration in a Field-Based Teacher Education Program

Abstract The Learning and Integrating New Knowledge and Skills (LINKS) project is designed, to integrate established and emerging technologies into the teacher preparation curriculum at Texas Woman’s University. LINKS addresses the technology needs of preservice teachers by supporting their development as well as the associated development of their mentor teachers and university instructors. This approach is consistent with best practice, and the research conducted to evaluate the efficacy of project implementation within the preservice teacher population is discussed. The project, as well as the accompanying research, is supported by a U.S. Department of Education Preparing Tomorrow’s Teachers to Use Technology implementation grant.
IFNγ Enhances CD64-Potentiated Phagocytosis of Treponema pallidum Opsonized with Human Syphilitic Serum by Human Macrophages

Syphilis is a multi-stage, sexually transmitted disease caused by the spirochete Treponema pallidum (Tp). Considered broadly, syphilis can be conceptualized as a dualistic process in which spirochete-driven inflammation, the cause of clinical manifestations, coexists to varying extents with bacterial persistence. Inflammation is elicited in the tissues, along with the persistence of spirochetes to keep driving a robust immune response while evading host defenses; this duality is best exemplified during the florid, disseminated stage called secondary syphilis (SS). SS lesions typically contain copious amounts of spirochetes along with a mixed cellular infiltrate consisting of CD4+ T cells, CD8+ T cells, NK cells, plasma cells, and macrophages. In the rabbit model, Tp are cleared by macrophages via antibody-mediated opsonophagocytosis. Previously, we demonstrated that human syphilitic serum (HSS) promotes efficient uptake of Tp by human monocytes and that opsonophagocytosis of Tp markedly enhances cytokine production. Herein, we used monocyte-derived macrophages to study Tp–macrophage interactions ex vivo. In the absence of HSS, monocyte-derived macrophages internalized low numbers of Tp and secreted little cytokine (e.g., TNF). By contrast, these same macrophages internalized large numbers of unopsonized Borrelia burgdorferi and secreted robust levels of cytokines. Maturation of macrophages with M-CSF and IFNγ resulted in a macrophage phenotype with increased expression of HLA-DR, CD14, inducible nitric oxide synthase, TLR2, TLR8, and the Fcγ receptors (FcγR) CD64 and CD16, even in the absence of LPS. Importantly, IFNγ-polarized macrophages resulted in a statistically significant increase in opsonophagocytosis of Tp accompanied by enhanced production of cytokines, macrophage activation markers (CD40, CD80), TLRs (TLR2, TLR7, TLR8), chemokines (CCL19, CXCL10, CXCL11), and TH1-promoting cytokines (IL-12, IL-15). Finally, the blockade of FcγRs, primarily CD64, significantly diminished spirochetal uptake and proinflammatory cytokine secretion by IFNγ-stimulated macrophages. Our ex vivo studies demonstrate the importance of CD64-potentiated uptake of opsonized Tp and suggest that IFNγ-activated macrophages have an important role in the context of early syphilis. Our study results also provide an ex vivo surrogate system for use in future syphilis vaccine studies.
STRATEGIC IT-OUTSOURCING : WHAT DO WE KNOW AND NEED TO KNOW ?

This paper presents a review of existing theoretical perspectives and empirical work on strategic IT outsourcing. By presenting the main findings of various recent studies and elaborating on current research gaps it conveys a picture of the past research, the present findings and the future applications of IT outsourcing. Prior research has generated theoretical insights and largely qualitative evidence on IT outsourcing. While quantitative studies remain sparse, limited to decisionmaking and performance, there is a lack of quantitative empirical research examining outsourcing processes more comprehensively. This paper outlines a simple, yet integrative process model and develops propositions, which serve to integrate and compare theoretical strands, to evaluate existing empirical research and to stimulate new avenues of empirical research.
Incorporating artificial intelligence technique into DSDM

Dynamic System Development Method has been criticized because of absence security practices in its phases. The key objective is proposed the secure software development framework. CBR-DSDM model had proposed in this paper to cover the security in an entire development life cycle of DSDM phases from the beginning to final phase. This paper proposes a way to map security activities into the dynamic system development method. A Case based reasoning technique is used for maintaining security requirement repository. The main purpose of this research is to fill the gap by integrating security into DSDM phases and maintaining its agility. Our model is evaluated using publish case study. For the Assessment of CBR-DSDM used the control experiment and expert review evaluation methods.
Office Type in Relation to Health, Well-Being, and Job Satisfaction Among Employees

This article investigates the hypothesis that office type has an influence on workers' health status and job satisfaction and 469 employees in seven different types, defined by their unique setup of architectural and functional features, have rated their health status and job satisfaction. Multivariate regression models were used for analysis of these outcomes, with adjustment for age, gender, job rank, and line of business. Both health status and job satisfaction differed between the seven office types. Lowest health status was found in medium-sized and small open plan offices. Best health was among employees in cell offices and flex offices. Workers in these types of offices and in shared room offices also rated the highest job satisfaction. Lowest job satisfaction was in combi offices, followed by medium-sized open plan offices. The differences between employees could possibly be ascribed to variations in architectural and functional features of the office types.
Heavy Traffic Limit Theorems for Two Tandem Polling Stations

We consider two tandem single-server stations in heavy traffic. There are two job types and they visit both stations in order. The first station processes jobs in an exhaustive service or gated service fashion and the second station uses an arbitrary nonidling service discipline. The stations have zero switch-over times. We prove heavy traffic limit theorems for the two-dimensional total workload processes, one under exhaustive service and one under gated service. The limiting processes are two-dimensional reflected Brownian motions (RBM) and the limit under exhaustive service is equal in distribution to the limiting process when the first station performs one of two buffer priority policies.
Phonological awareness in multilingual Chinese children

ABSTRACT Phonological awareness has been shown to be important for early literacy development in unilingual readers of English. We investigated its impact in English and Mandarin for 57 multilingual pupils whose language backgrounds were English, Chinese (Mandarin/dialect), or Bahasa Indonesia, using a homophone decision task, an English lexicality spelling test, and a Hanyu Pinyin (romanised Mandarin) spelling test. All three groups of pupils were studying English and Mandarin in the same school, and so, somewhat unusually, the influence of their language background (especially script exposure) could be seen in the absence of differences in teaching strategies. In English, the results showed that a relationship between script exposure and phonological awareness develops in line with the orthographic depth hypothesis (Frost, Katz, & Bentin, 1987). The Bahasa Indonesia group exhibited the highest levels of alphabetic phonological awareness, followed by the English group and then the Chinese group. In Mandarin, the pupils' performance on the Hanyu Pinyin spelling test suggested that tonal phonological awareness is relatively independent of alphabetic phonological awareness. It seems that language background can influence the nature and development of phonological awareness, and that this in turn may affect children's strategies for the subsequent acquisition of a second (or third) written language.
Filtering and clustering relations for unsupervised information extraction in open domain

Information Extraction has recently been extended to new areas by loosening the constraints on the strict definition of the extracted information and allowing to design more open information extraction systems. In this new domain of unsupervised information extraction, we focus on the task of extracting and characterizing a priori unknown relations between a given set of entity types. One of the challenges of this task is to deal with the large amount of candidate relations when extracting them from a large corpus. We propose in this paper an approach for the filtering of such candidate relations based on heuristics and machine learning models. More precisely, we show that the best model for achieving this task is a Conditional Random Field model according to evaluations performed on a manually annotated corpus of about one thousand relations. We also tackle the problem of identifying semantically similar relations by clustering large sets of them. Such clustering is achieved by combining a classical clustering algorithm and a method for the efficient identification of highly similar relation pairs. Finally, we evaluate the impact of our filtering of relations on this semantic clustering with both internal measures and external measures. Results show that the filtering procedure doubles the recall of the clustering while keeping the same precision.
The Galaxy Environment of O VI Absorption Systems

We combine a FUSE sample of O VI absorbers (z < 0.15) with a database of 1.07 million galaxy redshifts to explore the relationship between absorbers and galaxy environments. All 37 absorbers with N ≥ 1013.2 cm-2 lie within 800 h kpc of the nearest galaxy, with no compelling evidence for O VI absorbers in voids. The O VI absorbers often appear to be associated with environments of individual galaxies. Gas with 10% ± 5% solar metallicity (O VI and C III) has a median spread in distance of 350-500 h kpc around L⋆ galaxies and 200-270 h kpc around 0.1L⋆ galaxies (ranges reflect uncertain metallicities of gas undetected in Lyα absorption). In order to match the O VI line frequency, (d𝒩/dz) ≈ 20 for N ≥ 1013.2 cm-2, galaxies with L ≤ 0.1L⋆ must contribute to the cross section. Lyα absorbers with N ≥ 1013.2 cm-2 cover ~50% of the surface area of typical galaxy filaments. Two-thirds of these show O VI and/or C III absorption, corresponding to a 33%-50% covering factor at 0.1 Z☉ and suggesting that metals are spread to a maximum distance of 800 h kpc, within typical galaxy supercluster filaments. Approximately 50% of the O VI absorbers have associated Lyα line pairs with separations (Δv)Lyα = 50-200 km s-1. These pairs could represent shocks at the speeds necessary to create copious O VI, located within 100 h kpc of the nearest galaxy and accounting for much of the two-point correlation function of low-z Lyα forest absorbers.
Play Assessment as a Procedure for Examining Cognitive, Communication, and Social Skills in Multihandicapped Children

This study explores the use of a play assessment procedure for examining the development of cognition, language, and social behaviors. Subjects were 17 multihandicapped children (median age 4-6). Results from an experimental Play Assessment Scale (PAS) were compared to results from multiple measures of cognition, language, and social behavior. All results were highly significant and are discussed in terms of the construct validity of the PAS and of the possible advantage of using a play format to assess skills in difficult-to-test children.
Managers dealing with work‐family‐conflict: an explorative analysis

Purpose – Most managers are heavily affected by the relationship between their professional and their private life. Work‐life‐balance is discussed rarely without discomfort, which suggests a massive tension and conflict caused by the contradiction of private and professional requirements. Managers use a range of individual strategies to deal with this conflict situation. An explorative empirical study on these strategies is presented.Design/methodology/approach – The sample is drawn largely according to the principles of theoretical sampling, different family‐work constellations provide the basis of selection. Our sample includes people from the upper and highest levels of organizational hierarchies. Most of them have children and working partners, hence they find themselves in specific phases of the family cycle. Thirty problem‐focussed interviews are content analyzed. In order to reveal pattern of dealing with work‐life‐conflict cluster and pronominal analyses are applied.Findings – Results show three d.