Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A study of 28 Elymus species using repetitive DNA sequences.

Four repetitive DNA sequences cloned from the barley (Hordeum vulgare) genome and common for different Triticeae species were used for a molecular study of phylogenetic relationships among 28 Elymus species. Two wild Hordeum species (H genome), two Pseudoroegneria species (S genome), Agropyron cristatum (P genome), and Australopyrum velutinum (W genome) were included as genomic representatives for the genomes that supposedly were involved in the evolution of the genus Elymus. Our results are essentially congruent with the genomic classification system. This study demonstrates that Elymus is not a monophyletic genus. Based on an analysis of Southern blot hybridization we could discriminate between SY and SH species owing to the strong specific hybridization pattern of the H genome. Hexaploid SYH species gave a hybridization pattern similar to SH species for the same reason. The results support the genomic composition of Elymus batalinii as SYP and also indicated the presence of at least one H genome in Elymus enysii with a hitherto unknown genomic constitution. Elymus erianthus had a hybridization pattern distinctly different from all other species in the investigation. Key words : Elymus, RFLP, phylogeny, repetitive DNA.
Response to “Meaningful Motivation for Work Motivation Theory”

This article presents a response by Richard M. Steers, Richard T. Mowday and Debra L. Shapiro to Christopher Michaelson's comments on the July 2004 “Academy of Management Review” Special Topic Forum regarding the Future of Work Motivation Theory. Steers and colleagues agree with Michaelson that the articles in the forum did not directly address his desire to see further linkages developed between work motivation theories and people's legitimate desire for meaningful lives. The authors note that no papers were submitted to this special issue directly examining the topic and encouraged Professor Michaelson to develop this linkage. If there are to be any future papers on the subject the line of theory development will need to be differentiated from current constructs in work motivation research which currently focus on intrinsic sources of motivation.
Comparison of the E-test with the NCCLS M38-P Method for Antifungal Susceptibility Testing of Common and Emerging Pathogenic Filamentous Fungi

ABSTRACT The National Committee for Clinical Laboratory Standards (NCCLS) M38-P method describes standard parameters for testing the fungistatic antifungal activities (MICs) of established agents against filamentous fungi (molds). The present study evaluated the in vitro fungistatic activities of itraconazole and amphotericin B by the E-test and the NCCLS M38-P microdilution method against 186 common and emerging pathogenic molds (123 isolates of Aspergillus spp. [five species], 16 isolates of Fusarium spp. [two species], 4Paecilomyces lilacinus isolates, 5 Rhizopus arrhizus isolates, 15 Scedosporium spp., 18 dematiaceous fungi, and 5 Trichoderma longibrachiatumisolates). The agreement between the methods for amphotericin B MICs ranged from 70% for Fusarium solani to ≥90% for most of the other species after the first reading; agreement was dependent on both the incubation time and the species being evaluated. Major discrepancies between the amphotericin B MICs determined by the E-test and the NCCLS M38-P method were demonstrated for three of the five species of Aspergillus tested and the two species ofFusarium tested. This discrepancy was more marked after 48 h of incubation; the geometric mean MICs determined by the E-test increased between 24 and 48 h from between 1.39 and 3.3 μg/ml to between 5.2 and >8 μg/ml for Aspergillus flavus, Aspergillus fumigatus, and Aspergillus nidulans. The agreement between the itraconazole MICs determined by the E-test and the NCCLS M38-P method ranged from 83.3% for A. nidulansto ≥90% for all the other species tested; the overall agreement was higher (92.7%) than that for amphotericin B (87.9%). The agreement was less dependent on the incubation time. Clinical trials need to be conducted to establish the role of the results of either the E-test or the NCCLS M38-P method in vitro for molds with the two agents as predictors of clinical outcome.
Public Knowledge, Beliefs and Behavior on Antibiotic Use and Self-Medication in Lithuania

Irrational antibiotic use has led society to antibiotic resistance—a serious health problem worldwide. This study aimed to assess public knowledge, beliefs, and behavior concerning antibiotic use and self-medication in Lithuania. The cross-sectional survey method was processed using a validated questionnaire in different regions of Lithuania. In total, 1005 adults completed the questionnaire and were included in the study. More than half of the respondents (61.1%) had poor knowledge of antibiotics. Almost half of the respondents incorrectly identified antibiotics as being effective either against viral (26.0%) or mixed (bacterial and viral) infections (21.7%). The respondents with lower educational qualifications (OR = 2.515; 95% CI 1.464–4.319; p = 0.001) and those from rural areas (OR = 1.765; 95% CI 1.041–2.991; p = 0.035) were significantly less knowledgeable of antibiotics. There was no significant difference between genders, different age groups, or different parenthood status. The determined level of self–medication with antibiotics was 31.0%. The men (OR = 1.650; 95% CI 1.120–2.430; p = 0.011), the respondents from rural areas (OR = 2.002; 95% CI 1.343–2.985; p = 0.001), and those without children (OR = 2.428; 95% CI 1.477–3.991; p < 0.001) were more likely to use antibiotics in self-medication. Lithuanian residents’ knowledge of antibiotics is insufficient. More information about antibiotic use should be provided by physicians and pharmacists. Self-medication with antibiotics is a serious problem in Lithuania and requires considerable attention.
Duodenal levodopa infusion monotherapy vs oral polypharmacy in advanced Parkinson disease

Objectives: To compare daytime intraduodenal levodopa/carbidopa infusion as monotherapy with individually optimized conventional combination therapies in patients with advanced Parkinson disease (PD) for motor fluctuations and quality of life (QoL). Methods: Twenty-four patients with motor fluctuations and dyskinesia were studied in a randomized crossover design to compare individualized conventional treatment and intraduodenal infusion of a levodopa/carbidopa gel for 3 + 3 weeks. Video scoring of motor function was assessed by blinded assessors on a global Treatment Response Scale from −3 to 0 to +3 (from severe “off” to “on” to “on” with severe dyskinesia). Patient self-assessment of motor performance and QoL was done using an electronic diary. Results: Median percentage of ratings in a functional “on” interval (−1 to +1) was increased from 81 to 100% by infusion therapy (p < 0.01). This improvement was accompanied by a decrease in “off” state (p < 0.01) and no increase in dyskinesia. Median Unified Parkinson's Disease Rating Scale score decreased from 53 to 35 in favor of infusion (p < 0.05). QoL was improved, using the two instruments: Parkinson's Disease Questionnaire-39 and 15D Quality of Life Instrument (p < 0.01). Adverse events were similar for both treatment strategies. Conclusions: Continuous intraduodenal infusion of the levodopa/carbidopa enteral gel as monotherapy is safe and clinically superior to a number of individually optimized combinations of conventional oral and subcutaneous medications in patients with motor fluctuations. Intraduodenal infusion of levodopa offers an important alternative in treating patients with advanced Parkinson disease.
Cell intrinsic mechanisms of T‐cell inhibition and application to cancer therapy

Summary: Establishing a balance between the rapid generation of effective immunity and the production of overly exuberant or excessively prolonged responses is critical to the maintenance of the equilibrium between health and disease. The preservation of homeostasis and prevention of inappropriate activation of immunity is safeguarded by systems integrating the influences of T‐cell receptor signaling, pro‐inflammatory danger signals, and positive costimulatory signals on the one hand with those of several layers of both cell‐intrinsic and cell‐extrinsic inhibitory checkpoints on the other. Evolution has thus provided an immunological system capable of clearance of pathogens and infected cells but which generally avoids the severe collateral damage that is associated with failure to control immunity. Central tolerance to self‐antigens constitutes the first line of defense against self‐destruction. Because central tolerance mechanisms fail to eliminate all self‐reactive immune effector cells, other immune‐regulating (peripheral tolerance) mechanisms are required to prevent excessive immune responses. Dysfunction of these inhibitory pathways in terms of reduced activity can result in the unmasking of self‐directed responses and a variety of autoimmune morbidities. Conversely, enhanced inhibitory activity can restrict the generation of clinically useful immunity to cancers and to chronic infectious pathogens. This may manifest not only as inhibition of immunity directed towards what are largely aberrantly or overexpressed ‘self’ targets on malignant cells but also additional exaggeration of inhibitory pathway activity mediated via upregulation on tumor cells or stromal tissues of the ligands for inhibitory receptors expressed by lymphocytes. The selective pressures exerted by immuno‐editing will favor the outgrowth of such immuno‐evasive malignant clones. These pathways therefore represent significant hurdles to the generation of therapeutic anti‐cancer responses. The most active of the T‐cell intrinsic inhibitory pathways belong to the immunoglobulin superfamily, which occupies a central importance in the coordination of immune responses. The CD28/cytotoxic T‐lymphocyte antigen‐4 (CTLA‐4):B7‐1/B7‐2 receptor/ligand grouping represents the archetypal example of these immune regulators. Therapies aimed at overcoming these mechanisms of peripheral tolerance, in particular by blocking the inhibitory checkpoints, offer the potential to generate anti‐tumor activity, either as monotherapies or in synergism with other therapies that directly or indirectly enhance presentation of tumor epitopes to the immune system.
Carbon Nanotube Based Memory Development and Testing

Manufacturability of most electronic devices based on carbon nanotubes depends on the ability to place, manipulate, and control individual structures at the molecular level. This approach is problematic due to the precise placement and registration required thus making large scale manufacturing difficult if not impossible. A novel technique has been developed to overcome this hurdle, allowing CNT based nano-devices to be fabricated directly on existing production CMOS fabrication lines. This technique has been demonstrated in a Class 1 commercial fab and enables the fabrication of CNT nonvolatile memory devices directly onto CMOS substrates. This unique approach relies on the deposition and lithographic patterning, using standard semiconductor toolsets, of a 1-2 nm thick fabric of carbon nanotubes which retain their molecular scale, electro-mechanical characteristics, even when patterned to less than 100 nm feature sizes. The non-volatile CNT switch is turned on using electrostatic forces and remains in the ON state through van der Waals (VDW) attraction. The switch is turned off by overcoming the VDW forces and creating separation of the tubes from a contact.
A randomised trial of high-dose chemotherapy in the salvage treatment of patients failing first-line platinum chemotherapy for advanced germ cell tumours.

BACKGROUND Incomplete remission or relapse from first-line chemotherapy has poor prognosis in male germ cell tumour patients. This phase III randomised trial compares conventional salvage to high-dose-intensification chemotherapy. PATIENTS AND METHODS Between February 1994 and September 2001, 280 patients from 43 institutions in 11 countries, were randomly assigned to receive either four cycles of cisplatin, ifosfamide and etoposide (or vinblastine) (arm A), or three such cycles followed by high-dose carboplatin, etoposide and cyclophosphamide (CarboPEC) with haematopoietic stem cell support (arm B). RESULTS Similar complete and partial response rates were observed in both treatment arms (56%; 95% CI 50% to 62%). There were 3% and 7% toxic deaths in arms A and B, respectively. No significant improvements with CarboPEC were observed in either 3-year event-free survival (35% versus 42%, P=0.16) or overall survival (53%; 95% CI 46% to 59%). Complete responders with CarboPEC had a significant improvement in disease-free survival (55% versus 75% at 3 years, P <0.04). CONCLUSIONS The single cycle of high-dose salvage chemotherapy after three cycles of standard dose chemotherapy had no effect on treatment outcomes. These results suggest that data from uncontrolled studies should not be used to justify routine use of a toxic and expensive treatment without confirmation in a randomised trial.
Fundamentally different roles for LFA-1, Mac-1 and α4-integrin in neutrophil chemotaxis

Although the LFA-1, Mac-1 and α4 integrins are required for chemotaxis, it is unknown how they are regulated or what specific role they play. Previously we demonstrated that fMLP and IL-8 induce chemotaxis via the p38 MAPK and phosphoinositide 3-kinase (PI3K) pathways, respectively. Here we show that these chemoattractants also activate and use Mac-1 and LFA-1 in a differential manner during chemotaxis. Using integrin-specific substrata, we demonstrate that cell movement in response to IL-8 is mediated by Mac-1, whereas LFA-1 is required for directional migration. By contrast, chemotaxis to fMLP requires Mac-1 for cell movement, whereas LFA-1 and α4-integrin are required for directional migration. On serum protein, which contains ligands for LFA-1, Mac-1 and α4-integrin, chemotaxis to fMLP is dependent on Mac-1, whereas chemotaxis to IL-8 is dependent on LFA-1. These results suggest that Mac-1 is the dominant integrin involved in chemotaxis to fMLP, and LFA-1 is the dominant integrin involved in chemotaxis to IL-8. Consistent with these observations, higher quantities of high-affinity Mac-1 are found on cells chemotaxing to fMLP then on cells chemotaxing to IL-8. Moreover, a much larger quantity of clustered LFA-1 was found on cells migrating to IL-8 compared to cells moving towards fMLP. When cells are presented with competing gradients of fMLP and IL-8, they preferentially migrate towards fMLP and activate/utilize integrins in a manner identical to fMLP alone. Under the same conditions, p38 MAPK inhibition abolishes the preferential migration to fMLP; instead, the cells migrate preferentially towards IL-8. The activation and utilization of integrins under these conditions are consistent with patterns observed with IL-8 alone. Together, these data suggest that fMLP and IL-8 differentially activate integrins for use during chemotaxis, that p38 MAPK is a major mediator in the activation and utilization of integrins, and selective integrin activation occurs during chemotaxis between opposing gradients.
Yoruba Elites and Ethnic Politics in Nigeria: Obafemi Awolowo and Corporate Agency

Yoruba Elites and Ethnic Politics in Nigeria: Obafemi Awolowo and Corporate Agency. By Wale Adebanwi. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. Pp. xvii, 295; illustrations, maps, notes, bibliography. $95.00. If Wale Adebanwi's Yoruba Elites and Ethnic Politics in Nigeria were another biography of Obafemi Awolowo, one would be right to regard the exercise with a sense of being introduced to what is already familiar-especially since the late politician and nationalist left us rich, fairly definitive autobiographical documentations of his influential life. Fortunately for scholars of Nigerian and African politics, the book is much more than a biography of the late icon of Yoruba and Nigerian politics.In this well written monograph, Adebanwi accomplishes what few scholars dare to attempt: explore the long duree political evolution of a group through the instrumental agency of the group's most recognizable political player and symbol. When a similar individuated frame of analysis has been adopted in other contexts, the result has been that either the individual's symbolic and practical centrality to the group's political identity was subsumed by structural dynamics or the individual's political biography and agency were portrayed as transcending and determining the institutional and cultural universe of his/her group.Adebanwi's analysis avoids these errors. Instead, he shows that Yoruba ethnic and political consciousness informed and was in turn informed by the stature, ideas, and political symbolism of Obafemi Awolowo. The book also demonstrates that this mutual seepage between personal agency and group values has shaped the political strategies of those who have sought, since Awolowo's death in 1987, to reclaim and operationalize his legacy in order to advance the latter's famed egalitarian political prescriptions for Yorubaland and Nigeria.The evolution of ethnic political consciousness among the Yoruba, Adebanwi contends, mirrors the trajectory in other contexts-it was an elite project. There is, however, a major divergence, which is also one of the enduring insights of this work. The author persuasively argues that, in the Yoruba "lifeworld," elite politics should not be confused with elitism, as there is no contradiction between elite political interests and the aspirations of the Yoruba masses.Adebanwi states that, among the Yoruba, there is an expectational cultural universe requiring elite agents who invoke the Yoruba's collective identity as a source of legitimacy to become, like Awolowo, corporate agents-to use power and the institutions of governance "for the collective good" and in a way that "provides the tools (such as education, health services, etc.) for many other people to become members of the elite" (p. 13). Given that this is a variant of the much-analyzed ethos of responsible, paternal, and populist African big manhood, which is hardly unique to the Yoruba, Adebanwi's compelling argument would have been further strengthened by analytically inserting it into a wider continental discursive context. …
Large-Sample Inference on Spatial Dependence

We consider cross-sectional data that exhibit no spatial correlation, but are feared to be spatially dependent. We demonstrate that a spatial version of the stochastic volatility model of financial econometrics, entailing a form of spatial autoregression, can explain such behaviour. The parameters are estimated by pseudo-Gaussian maximum likelihood based on log-transformed squares, and consistency and asymptotic normality are established. Asymptotically valid tests for spatial independence are developed.
A Computational Framework to Emulate the Human Perspective in Flow Cytometric Data Analysis

Background In recent years, intense research efforts have focused on developing methods for automated flow cytometric data analysis. However, while designing such applications, little or no attention has been paid to the human perspective that is absolutely central to the manual gating process of identifying and characterizing cell populations. In particular, the assumption of many common techniques that cell populations could be modeled reliably with pre-specified distributions may not hold true in real-life samples, which can have populations of arbitrary shapes and considerable inter-sample variation. Results To address this, we developed a new framework flowScape for emulating certain key aspects of the human perspective in analyzing flow data, which we implemented in multiple steps. First, flowScape begins with creating a mathematically rigorous map of the high-dimensional flow data landscape based on dense and sparse regions defined by relative concentrations of events around modes. In the second step, these modal clusters are connected with a global hierarchical structure. This representation allows flowScape to perform ridgeline analysis for both traversing the landscape and isolating cell populations at different levels of resolution. Finally, we extended manual gating with a new capacity for constructing templates that can identify target populations in terms of their relative parameters, as opposed to the more commonly used absolute or physical parameters. This allows flowScape to apply such templates in batch mode for detecting the corresponding populations in a flexible, sample-specific manner. We also demonstrated different applications of our framework to flow data analysis and show its superiority over other analytical methods. Conclusions The human perspective, built on top of intuition and experience, is a very important component of flow cytometric data analysis. By emulating some of its approaches and extending these with automation and rigor, flowScape provides a flexible and robust framework for computational cytomics.
The Bacillus subtilis Competence Transcription Factor, ComK, Overrides LexA-imposed Transcriptional Inhibition without Physically Displacing LexA*

During the development of competence inBacillus subtilis the recA gene is activated by the competence transcription factor, ComK, which is presumably required to alleviate the transcriptional repression of recA by LexA. To investigate the mechanism by which ComK activatesrecA transcription we examined the binding of ComK and LexA to the recA promoter in vitro. Using hydroxyl radical protection analyses to establish the location of ComK dimer-binding sites within the recA promoter, we identified four AT-boxes in a configuration unique for ComK-regulated promoters. Gel mobility shift experiments showed that all four ComK dimer-binding sites were occupied at ComK concentrations in the physiological range. In addition, occupation of all ComK-binding sites did not prevent LexA from binding to the recA promoter, despite the fact that the ComK and LexA recognition motifs partially overlap. Although ComK did not replace LexA from the recA promoter, in vitro transcription analyses indicated that the presence of ComK is sufficient to alleviate LexA repression ofrecA.
Recognizing Chinese Elementary Discourse Unit on Comma

Element discourse unit (EDU) recognition is the primary task of discourse analysis. Chinese punctuation is viewed as a delimiter of elementary discourse units in Chinese. In this paper, we consider Chinese comma to be the boundary of the discourse units and also to anchor discourse relations between units separated by comma. We divide it into seven major types based on syntactic patterns and propose three different machine learning methods to automatically disambiguate the type of Chinese comma. The experimental results on Chinese Tree bank 6.0 show that our method outperforms the baseline.
Identification and Type Distribution of Astroviruses among Children with Gastroenteritis in Colombia and Venezuela

ABSTRACT Astrovirus infections were detected by enzyme immunoassay in 12 (5%) of 251 stool samples from children with gastroenteritis from Bogota, Colombia. In addition, astroviruses were detected by reverse transcription-PCR in 3 (10%) of 29 stool samples negative for other enteric pathogens collected in Caracas, Venezuela, from children with gastroenteritis. Astrovirus type 1 was the most frequently detected virus.