Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Azoarcus sp. CIB, an Anaerobic Biodegrader of Aromatic Compounds Shows an Endophytic Lifestyle

Background Endophytic bacteria that have plant growth promoting traits are of great interest in green biotechnology. The previous thought that the Azoarcus genus comprises bacteria that fit into one of two major eco-physiological groups, either free-living anaerobic biodegraders of aromatic compounds or obligate endophytes unable to degrade aromatics under anaerobic conditions, is revisited here. Methodology/Principal Findings Light, confocal and electron microscopy reveal that Azoarcus sp. CIB, a facultative anaerobe β-proteobacterium able to degrade aromatic hydrocarbons under anoxic conditions, is also able to colonize the intercellular spaces of the rice roots. In addition, the strain CIB displays plant growth promoting traits such nitrogen fixation, uptake of insoluble phosphorus and production of indoleacetic acid. Therefore, this work demonstrates by the first time that a free-living bacterium able to degrade aromatic compounds under aerobic and anoxic conditions can share also an endophytic lifestyle. The phylogenetic analyses based on the 16S rDNA and nifH genes confirmed that obligate endophytes of the Azoarcus genus and facultative endophytes, such as Azoarcus sp. CIB, locate into different evolutionary branches. Conclusions/Significance This is the first report of a bacterium, Azoarcus sp. CIB, able to degrade anaerobically a significant number of aromatic compounds, some of them of great environmental concern, and to colonize the rice as a facultative endophyte. Thus, Azoarcus sp. CIB becomes a suitable candidate for a more sustainable agricultural practice and phytoremediation technology.
Extraction and Sensitive Detection of Toxins A and B from the Human Pathogen Clostridium difficile in 40 Seconds Using Microwave-Accelerated Metal-Enhanced Fluorescence

Clostridium difficile is the primary cause of antibiotic associated diarrhea in humans and is a significant cause of morbidity and mortality. Thus the rapid and accurate identification of this pathogen in clinical samples, such as feces, is a key step in reducing the devastating impact of this disease. The bacterium produces two toxins, A and B, which are thought to be responsible for the majority of the pathology associated with the disease, although the relative contribution of each is currently a subject of debate. For this reason we have developed a rapid detection assay based on microwave-accelerated metal-enhanced fluorescence which is capable of detecting the presence of 10 bacteria in unprocessed human feces within 40 seconds. These promising results suggest that this prototype biosensor has the potential to be developed into a rapid, point of care, real time diagnostic assay for C. difficile.
A Framework for Multiperspective Rendering

We present a framework for the direct rendering of multiperspective images. We treat multiperspective imaging systems as devices for capturing smoothly varying set of rays, and we show that under an appropriate parametrization, multiperspective images can be characterized as continuous manifolds in ray space. We use a recently introduced class of General Linear Cameras (GLC), which describe all 2D linear subspaces of rays, as primitives for constructing multiperspective images. We show GLCs when constrained by an appropriate set of rules, can be laid out to tile the image plane and, hence, generate arbitrary multiperspective renderings. Our framework can easily render a broad class of multiperspective images, such as multiperspective panoramas, neocubist style renderings, and faux-animations from still-life scenes. We also show a method to minimize distortions in multiperspective images by uniformly sampling rays on a sampling plane even when they do not share a common origin.
13C isotopologue perturbation studies of Listeria monocytogenes carbon metabolism and its modulation by the virulence regulator PrfA

The carbon metabolism of Listeria monocytogenes (Lm) EGD and the two isogenic mutant strains LmΔprfA and LmΔprfApPRFA* (showing no or enhanced expression, respectively, of the virulence factor PrfA) was determined by 13C isotopologue perturbation. After growth of the bacteria in a defined medium containing a mixture of [U-13C6]glucose and glucose with natural 13C abundance (1:25, wt/wt), 14 amino acids were isolated and analyzed by NMR spectroscopy. Multiply 13C-labeled isotopologues were determined quantitatively by signal deconvolution. The 13C enrichments and isotopologue patterns allowed the reconstruction of most amino acid biosynthesis pathways and illustrated that overproduced PrfA may strongly influence the synthesis of some amino acids, notably that of the branched amino acids (Val, Ile, and Leu). Retrobiosynthetic analysis of the isotopologue compositions showed that degradation of glucose occurs to a large extent via the pentose phosphate pathway and that the citrate cycle is incomplete because of the absence of 2-oxoglutarate dehydrogenase activity. The reconstructed labeling pattern of oxaloacetate indicated its formation by carboxylation of pyruvate. This metabolic reaction seems to have a strong impact on the growth requirement in defined minimal medium. Bioinformatical steady-state network analyses and flux distribution predictions confirmed the experimental data and predicted metabolite fluxes through the enzymes of the pathways under study.
Living in the Moment: Daily Life Assessments of Mindfulness Meditation on Stress, Coping Flexibility, and Well-Being

The broaden-and-build theory proposes that positive emotions build over time to promote well-being (Fredrickson, 2001). Mindfulness meditation (MM) promotes positive emotions and well-being (Garland et al., 2010). This study examined the influences of a short-term MM intervention on trait mindfulness, stress, coping flexibility, and well-being (defined as flourishing and positive emotions) at longitudinal, daily, and momentary levels. Further, this study examined whether coping flexibility mediated the link between stress and well-being, and whether MM moderated each of the previous links. Results indicate that MM increased mindfulness, coping flexibility, and well-being, and decreased stress over time. Coping flexibility mediated the link between stress and flourishing at the longitudinal level. Overall, MM did not moderate mediated links. Results support the broaden-and-build theory and indicate that MM builds positive resources over time. Future studies should continue to examine the mechanisms by which MM promotes well-being.
Type I Interferon Response Is Delayed in Human Astrovirus Infections

Type I interferon (IFN) activation and its subsequent effects are important in the response to viral infections. Here we show that human astroviruses (HAstVs), which are important agents of acute gastroenteritis in children, induce a mild and delayed IFN response upon infecting CaCo-2 cells. Although IFN-β mRNA is detected within infected cells and supernatant from infected cells show antiviral activity against the replication of other well-known IFN-sensitive viruses, these responses occur at late stages of infection once genome replication has taken place. On the other hand, HAstV replication can be partially reduced by the addition of exogenous IFN, and inhibition of IFN activation by BX795 enhances viral replication, indicating that HAstVs are IFN-sensitive viruses. Finally, different levels of IFN response were observed in cells infected with different HAstV mutants with changes in the hypervariable region of nsP1a/4, suggesting that nsP1a/4 genotype may potentially have clinical implications due to its correlation with the viral replication phenotype and the antiviral responses induced within infected cells.
Reflex Cardioventilatory Responses to Hypoxia in the Flathead Gray Mullet (Mugil cephalus) and Their Behavioral Modulation by Perceived Threat of Predation and Water Turbidity*

In hypoxia, gray mullet surface to ventilate well‐oxygenated water in contact with air, an adaptive response known as aquatic surface respiration (ASR). Reflex control of ASR and its behavioral modulation by perceived threat of aerial predation and turbid water were studied on mullet in a partly sheltered aquarium with free surface access. Injections of sodium cyanide (NaCN) into either the bloodstream (internal) or ventilatory water stream (external) revealed that ASR, hypoxic bradycardia, and branchial hyperventilation were stimulated by chemoreceptors sensitive to both systemic and water O2 levels. Sight of a model avian predator elicited bradycardia and hypoventilation, a fear response that inhibited reflex hyperventilation following external NaCN. The time lag to initiation of ASR following NaCN increased, but response intensity (number of events, time at the surface) was unchanged. Mullet, however, modified their behavior to surface under shelter or near the aquarium edges. Turbid water abolished the fear response and effects of the predator on gill ventilation and timing of ASR following external NaCN, presumably because of reduced visibility. However, in turbidity, mullet consistently performed ASR under shelter or near the aquarium edges. These adaptive modulations of ASR behavior would allow mullet to retain advantages of the chemoreflex when threatened by avian predators or when unable to perceive potential threats in turbidity.
SIX MOOSE FACTORY CREE LIFE HISTORIES: THE NEGOTIATION OF SELF AND THE MAINTENANCE OF CULTURE

Life histories, considered as simultaneously cultural and personal documents, are used to discern the patternlng and individual variation within culture. six t,toosl Factory cree life hlstories irrustrate how Native individuars . oipt to and accommodate culturaL changes. Through an inaiviauat developmental. process, competence i-s acqui_red and biculturalism is achieved. The achievement of biculturalism, which incorporates the best f rom both curtural wor. l_ds, is considered as. an adaptive strategy for ensuring personal and cultural survival. The usefulnell of life nisioiies outside the realm of anthropology is aLso considered and other modes of expression such as art, music, drama, all of which require language' are suggested to be, like life histories, stories about the self and id.entitv.
The visibility and invisibility of performance management in schools

This article presents findings from a study of performance management in 10 schools, five primary and five secondary. The aim was to gain a snapshot of how headteachers are interpreting and implementing the reforms to the performance and capability procedures for teachers introduced in September 2013. The findings suggest that the evaluation of teachers is conducted within a context of normalised visibility with evidence of competence collected via observations, learning walks, electronic data, organisational and architectural structures. However, this normalised visibility is contrasted with the normalised invisibility of the actual processes of judgement such as appraisal. Invisibility also frames the management of incompetence, with poorly performing teachers routinely offered ‘compromise agreements’ to avoid the official capability procedures. The article concludes by highlighting the limits of the panoptic metaphor in a consideration of teacher evaluation and discusses an alternative metaphor, that of glass, with which to view the performance management of teachers.
What every teacher needs to know about clinical reasoning

Context One of the core tasks assigned to clinical teachers is to enable students to sort through a cluster of features presented by a patient and accurately assign a diagnostic label, with the development of an appropriate treatment strategy being the end goal. Over the last 30 years there has been considerable debate within the health sciences education literature regarding the model that best describes how expert clinicians generate diagnostic decisions.
Importance of indoor allergens in the induction of allergy and elicitation of

During the last few decades, many countries have experienced an increase in the prevalence and severity of asthma. Over the same period, the population in the developed world has retreated indoors, and homes have become better insulated and more energy efficient, resulting in a warm and humid environment with low ventilation rates, ideally suited to house‐dust‐mite population growth throughout the year. Increasing exposure and increasing sensitivity to indoor allergens represent a progressively higher risk factor for the development of asthma. The development of sensitivity to indoor allergens and the symptoms and severity of asthma in later childhood are directly related to the exposure to allergens in infancy. It was relatively straightforward to demonstrate a quantitative linear dose‐response relationship between exposure to house‐dust‐mite allergens and subsequent sensitization. However, showing the same for exposure and asthma severity has been more difficult, as the relationship between exposure and asthma symptoms in already sensitized individuals is much more complex than in the case of exposure and sensitization. Nevertheless, sensitized individuals are likely to have more severe asthma if exposed to high allergen levels than if their level of exposure is low. Sensitization to house‐dust mites is a major independent risk factor for asthma in all areas where climate is conducive to mite population growth. The relevance of allergens other that mite is not consistent between different areas, and depends on the climate, habits, and socio‐economic features of the local community. It would appear that presence of mite allergens in homes “overshadows” other allergens (e.g., cat, dog, or cockroach) as a risk factor for sensitization and subsequent development of allergic disease. It is possible that this is the consequence of the difference in inherent potency between allergen sources, and the question of why mite allergens are so potent in inducing sensitization and atopic disease remains to be answered.
State-Provided Paid Family Leave and the Gender Wage Gap

The U.S. is the only OECD country that does not offer any form of federal paid parental leave. Only three states—California, New Jersey and Rhode Island—have state paid parental leave policies; descriptive statistics and a regression analysis of women and men's wages in those three states, before and after the implementation of the policies, we assess the effects of paid leave programs on the gender wage gaps in those states. Our results show us that California's paid family leave policy had greater effects on decreasing the gender wage gap than the policies in New Jersey and Rhode Island. In addition, our regression analysis shows us that women of childbearing age (19-45 years) saw an increase in their wages after the policy implementations, while men of childbearing age saw a decrease in their wages. This led us to the conclusion that paid family leave policies may be effective in decreasing the gender wage gap; however it is problematic that men's wages decreased, implying that the policies may not be totally welfare optimizing. However, we came to an important conclusion that will hopefully entice more states and the federal government to implement policies to better support working parents. IV ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank Professor Pedace for his continued guidance in creating this thesis, and for standing my relentless number of emails, and presence at office hours. I really could not have made this final product without you! I would also like to thank Professor Dildar for providing me with great advice, contributions, and perspectives that added to the depth of this thesis. I appreciate both of your time and commitment to me so much. Additionally, I would like to thank my peer reviewer and friend, Emily Long, for her extremely helpful feedback and critiques that helped me shape vital parts of this paper to be something that I am proud of. I appreciate you more than you know. Last but not least, I would like to thank my mom for texting me a million ideas for a thesis topic in September, one of them being " gender wage gap ". I love you! V
The effect of alendronate (Fosamax) and implant surface on bone integration and remodeling in a canine model.

Patients at high risk for osteoporosis and its associated morbidity, including postmenopausal women, are being pharmacologically managed to stabilize and improve bone mass. Alendronate sodium (Fosamax) is a commonly used antiresorptive agent effective in osteopenic women for reducing bone resorption, increasing bone density, and decreasing fracture incidence. With the increased incidence of alendronate-treated women who are undergoing hip replacement or fracture repair by prosthesis placement, data are needed to predict how alendronate affects host bone integration with uncemented surfaces. The aim of this study was to determine the effect of alendronate on new bone formation and attachment to implant surfaces in a normal and simulated estrogen-deficient, calcium-deficient canine model, using an implantable bone growth chamber. Alendronate did not affect host bone integration to surfaces commonly used in uncemented total joint arthroplasty, but there were significant differences dependent solely on the type of surface.
User Independent Gesture Interaction for Small Handheld Devices

Accelerometer-based gesture recognition facilitates a complementary interaction modality for controlling mobile devices and home appliances. Using gestures for the task of home appliance control requires use of the same device and gestures by different persons, i.e. user independent gesture recognition. The practical application in small embedded low-resource devices also requires high computational performance. The user independent gesture recognition accuracy was evaluated with a set of eight gestures and seven users, with a total of 1120 gestures in the dataset. Twenty-state continuous HMM yielded an average of 96.9% user independent recognition accuracy, which was cross-validated by leaving one user in turn out of the training set. Continuous and discrete five-state HMM computational performances were compared with a reference test in a PC environment, indicating that discrete HMM is 20% faster. Computational performance of discrete five-state HMM was evaluated in an embedded hardware environment with a 104 MHz ARM-9 processor and Symbian OS. The average recognition time per gesture calculated from 1120 gesture repetitions was 8.3 ms. With this result, the computational performance difference between the compared methods is considered insignificant in terms of practical application. Continuous HMM is hence recommended as a preferred method due to its better suitability for a continuous-valued signal, and better recognition accuracy. The results suggest that, according to both evaluation criteria, HMM is feasible for practical user independent gesture control applications in mobile low-resource embedded environments.
Novel concepts in the design of near-field antenna for short-distance wireless power transmission with high transfer efficiency

This paper summarizes two novel concepts of antenna design for the applications of wireless power transmission at short distance. The design considers the near-field radiation characteristics of antenna to enhance the energy transfer efficiency. In particular, the first one considers the energy reaction when the transmitting (TX) and receiving (RX) antennas are very close to each other, where the mutual coupling may affect the S parameters of TX and RX antennas. On the other hand, the second one assumes the RX antenna is located in the radiation region of TX antenna, where the energy experiences energy divergence along propagation. The energy is thus focused by using an array of antennas phased to produce a focus region.
Foundations of Education Research: Understanding Theoretical Components

1. Foundations of Research: Conceptual Framework 2. Influences on Research and Researchers: Episte-what? 3. Research Paradigms 4. Research and Theory: Just a Hunch or Something More? 5. Theoretical Frameworks: You Can't Have a How Without a Why 6. Research Methodologies and Methods: Ingredients for Research Success 7. Myths and Misconceptions about Research
Irregular topography at the Earth’s inner core boundary

Compressional seismic wave reflected off the Earth’s inner core boundary (ICB) from earthquakes occurring in the Banda Sea and recorded at the Hi-net stations in Japan exhibits significant variations in travel time (from -2 to 2.5 s) and amplitude (with a factor of more than 4) across the seismic array. Such variations indicate that Earth’s ICB is irregular, with a combination of at least two scales of topography: a height variation of 14 km changing within a lateral distance of no more than 6 km, and a height variation of 4–8 km with a lateral length scale of 2–4 km. The characteristics of the ICB topography indicate that small-scale variations of temperature and/or core composition exist near the ICB, and/or the ICB topographic surface is being deformed by small-scale forces out of its thermocompositional equilibrium position and is metastable.
Are Computers Effective Lie Detectors? A Meta-Analysis of Linguistic Cues to Deception

This meta-analysis investigates linguistic cues to deception and whether these cues can be detected with computer programs. We integrated operational definitions for 79 cues from 44 studies where software had been used to identify linguistic deception cues. These cues were allocated to six research questions. As expected, the meta-analyses demonstrated that, relative to truth-tellers, liars experienced greater cognitive load, expressed more negative emotions, distanced themselves more from events, expressed fewer sensory–perceptual words, and referred less often to cognitive processes. However, liars were not more uncertain than truth-tellers. These effects were moderated by event type, involvement, emotional valence, intensity of interaction, motivation, and other moderators. Although the overall effect size was small, theory-driven predictions for certain cues received support. These findings not only further our knowledge about the usefulness of linguistic cues to detect deception with computers in applied settings but also elucidate the relationship between language and deception.
An investigation of non-spatial cognitive abilities in an asocial corvid, the Clark's nutcracker (Nucifraga columbiana)

A great deal of research suggests that the cognitive abilities of birds in the family Corvidae (crows and jays) are comparable in many aspects to that of apes. Scientists have posited competing hypotheses to explain how complex cognitive abilities arise in a species or group of animals. One such hypothesis, the social-intelligence hypothesis, states that the demands of living in a large, dynamic group drive an animal's need for complex cognitive skills. The ecological-intelligence hypothesis, predicts that generalist foragers develop more highly flexible behaviors and a wider cognitive repertoire than specialist foragers. To date, cognitive research on corvids has focused on corvids that are highly social and are generalist foragers. From a comparative standpoint, I examined the cognitive abilities of a corvid that is relatively asocial and a specialist forager. The Clarks' nutcracker (Nucifraga columbiana) is thought to be perhaps the least social corvid, and it largely specializes on the seeds of one species of pine (Pinus edulis). I tested nutcrackers using several tasks in three broad areas of cognition: inferential reasoning, numerical discrimination, and social intelligence. These experiments represent novel tests of cognitive abilities in this species. I found that the nutcrackers performed in a similar manner as social mammals and corvid birds, in all three areas of cognition. This suggests that social group size may not have a large impact on the development of a broad range of problem solving skills. Rather, ecological pressures associated with finding, extracting, caching and protecting seeds from pilferage may have influenced the development of complex cognition in this species.