Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Modulation of HIV-1 Integrase Activity by Single-Stranded Oligonucleotides and their Conjugates with Eosin

Integration of the DNA copy of the genomic RNA into an infected cell genome is one of the key steps of the replication cycle of all retroviruses. It is catalyzed by the viral enzyme, integrase. We have shown that conjugates of short single-stranded oligonucleotides with eosin efficiently inhibit the catalytic activity of the HIV-1 integrase. In this article, we have found that the dependence of the integrase catalytic activity on the concentration of oligonucleotides has a bell-shaped pattern. The modulation of HIV-1 integrase activity correlated with the oligonucleotide length and was not associated with specific sequences. Moreover, a similar mode of the oligonucleotide action was found for integrase from the prototype foamy virus. This dual effect of the oligonucleotide and their conjugates with eosin might be explained by their binding with retroviral integrase in two different sites; the oligodeoxynucleotide binding in the first site results in integrase activation, whereas interactions with another one lead to inhibition of the enzyme activity. Eosin coupling to oligonucleotides did not change the mode of their action but enhanced their affinity to both binding sites. The affinity increase was found to be much more important for the site responsible for the integrase inhibition, thus explaining the high inhibitory potency of oligonucleotide-eosin conjugates.
Vaccination of Guinea Pigs with DNA Encoding the Mycobacterial Antigen MPB83 Influences Pulmonary Pathology but Not Hematogenous Spread following Aerogenic Infection with Mycobacterium bovis

ABSTRACT Protection of cattle against bovine tuberculosis by vaccination could be an important control strategy in countries where there is persistent Mycobacterium bovis infection in wildlife and in developing countries where it is not economical to implement a tuberculin test and slaughter control program. The main aim of such a vaccination strategy would be to reduce transmission of infection by reducing the lung pathology caused by infection and preventing seeding of the organism to organs from which M. bovis could be excreted. Recent reports of successful DNA vaccination against Mycobacterium tuberculosis in small-animal models have suggested that DNA vaccines act by reducing lung pathology without sensitizing animals to tuberculin testing. We therefore evaluated the ability of vaccines consisting of DNA encoding the mycobacterial antigens MPB83 and 85A to reduce lung pathology and prevent hematogenous spread in guinea pigs challenged with a low dose of aerosolized M. bovis. Vaccination with MPB83 DNA reduced the severity of pulmonary lesions, as assessed by histopathology, and resembled M. bovis BCG vaccination in this respect. However, unlike BCG vaccination, MPB83 DNA vaccination did not protect challenged guinea pigs from hematogenous spread of organisms to the spleen. In contrast, vaccination with antigen 85A DNA, a promising DNA vaccine for human tuberculosis, had no measurable protective effect against infection with M. bovis.
MEASUREMENT OF FAECAL CALPROTECTIN LEVEL IN INFLAMMATORY BOWEL DISEASE

The newly available surrogate marker tests for inflammatory bowel disease have the potential to make it easier to distinguish between functional and organic diseases of the gut and predict or confirm relapse in known patients with inflammatory bowel disease. A study conducted in the University of Padova by Barabino et al in 2009 [1] compared a number of non-invasive tests for diagnosing intestinal inflammation in children with spondyloarthropathies. Forty-two children study IBD or rheumatologic manifestations associated with gastrointestinal symptoms, investigated by 99mTechnetium-HMPAO labeled white cell scanning, abdominal ultrasound, ESR, faecal occult blood and faecal alpha 1-antitrypsin. 99mTechnetium-HMPAO labeled white cell scanning was shown to be the most sensitive (85%) and specific (100%) in detecting gut inflammation.
AIS Electronic

The backbone of the U.S economy is micro-enterprises which are the smallest form of business and are often owned by a single entrepreneur with very limited resources. It appears that when these micro-enterprises adopt ICTs, their ability to survive and grow increases. Through two in-depth case studies, this research explains how Information Technology may be adopted and supported within micro-enterprises through the process of applying IT interventions targeted to their needs. The findings show that through IT interventions, micro-entrepreneurs have the potential to be psychologically empowered through skill development and critical awareness enabling them to be positioned for positive cycles of growth
Towards a novel classification of human malignancies based on gene expression patterns

As a result of progress on the human genome project, approximately 19 000 genes have been identified and tens of thousands more tentatively identified as partial fragments of genes termed expressed sequence tags (ESTs). Most of these genes are only partially characterized and the functions of the vast majority are as yet unknown. It is likely that many genes that might be useful for diagnosis and/or prognostication of human malignancies have yet to be recognized. The advent of cDNA microarray technology now allows the efficient measurement of expression for almost every gene in the human genome in a single overnight hybridization experiment. This genomic scale approach has begun to reveal novel molecular‐based sub‐classes of tumours in breast carcinoma, colon carcinoma, lymphoma, leukaemia, and melanoma. In several instances, gene microarray analysis has already identified genes that appear to be useful for predicting clinical behaviour. This review discusses some recent findings using gene microarray technology and describes how this and related technologies are likely to contribute to the emergence of novel molecular classifications of human malignancies. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Nonlinear elasticity phantom containing spherical inclusions undergoing large deformations

Most biological tissues demonstrate nonlinear stress-strain relationships for sufficiently large deformations. A useful approach to characterizing and “optimizing” methodologies for studying nonlinear tissue elasticity is through experiments with tissue-mimicking phantoms. This work reports a phantom containing spherical inclusions created using information about the nonlinear behavior of agar-gelatin mixtures and agar-gelatin with oil emulsification. In this study, we demonstrated that the small strain shear modulus and the nonlinear behavior affect the strain image contrast as the material deforms. These observations are consistent with realistic Finite Element Analysis (FEA) simulations. The clinical relevance of this work is that nonlinear elasticity of the object being imaged may not only affect the image quality during strain imaging but might also provide information that can be used to differentiate tissues based on their nonlinear behaviors.
Evaluation of MIMO capacity in train tunnels

Nowadays the demand of multimedia services in a wireless scenario is increasing astonishingly and accordingly the requirements of bandwidth and quality of services towards the users. The study of the different scenarios where the providers will be offering such services is required in order to be able to ensure the quality. One of the most promising and less studied scenario is railways environments, in particular in tunnels. A tunnel is expected to be a multipath environment and so a natural solution for high rate communications is a MIMO system. In this paper the performance of a MIMO system is presented by means of a set of EM simulations of the channel matrix of the propagation inside tunnels.
Optimal dynamic phase add/drop mechanism in multiphase DC-DC buck converters

In multiphase buck converters, phases are dynamically added or dropped based on the output load, to improve efficiency. This is typically achieved by programming a lookup table containing the range of threshold currents for each phase, independent of input voltage and switching frequency. In this work, an algorithm is proposed to recalibrate the threshold currents for operation at optimum number of phases across changes in input voltage and switching frequency. To evaluate the algorithm, a 6-phase synchronous buck converter is tested in forced CCM (Continuous Conduction Mode) over several input voltages and switching frequencies. A maximum efficiency improvement of 1.6% is demonstrated with the proposed algorithm, when compared with the conventional scheme.
The subspace approach as a first stage in speech enhancement

To increase the performance of the communication systems and other applications related to speech or speaker recognition, it is usual to incorporate a preprocessing stage for speech enhancement before it enters a specific system. Although the signal subspace approach is very useful, it becomes less effective when the signal to noise ratio is lower than 10 dB. This is due to possible inaccuracies in estimating the noise, whose action on the different phonemes and frequency bands is far from uniform, even considering white noise. A critical point is estimating the signal subspace dimension. It not only depends on the variance the noise level but also on SNR, too, which varies according to the different temporal segments of speech as well as the frequency band. Then it is proposed to work on temporal frames in each critical band using as the reference the noise variance affected by a factor which depends on the particular SNR segment being considered to estimate the signal dimension Thus weak signal components are preserved which could be eliminated otherwise. The noisy signal projection on the signal subspace can be regarded as a first stage in the speech enhancement process that has to be complement with additional techniques.
Menage á trois: Double strand break repair, V(D)J recombination and DNA‐PK

All organisms possess mechanisms to repair double strand breaks (dsbs) generated in their DNA by damaging agents. Site‐specific dsbs are also introduced during V(D)J recombination. Four complementation groups of radiosensitive rodent mutants are defective in the repair of dsbs, and are unable to carry out V(D)J recombination effectively. The immune defect in Severe Combined Immunodeficient (scid) mice also results from an inability to undergo effective V(D)J recombination, and scid cell lines display a repair defect and belong to one of these complementation groups. These findings indicate a mechanistic overlap between the processes of DNA repair and V(D)J recombination. Recently, two of the genes defined by these complementation groups have been identified and shown to encode components of DNA‐dependent protein kinase (DNA‐PK). We review here the three fields which have become linked by these findings, and discuss the involvement of DNA‐PK in dsb rejoining and in V(D)J recombination.
Financial Supervision in Europe

Financial Supervision in Europe discusses the implications of financial market integration for the structure of financial supervision in the European Union. It argues that, at present, negotiations on a European system of supervisors might lead to a compromise that may prove sub-optimal given the evolution of national supervisory models and international financial markets. As integration continues and the most appropriate national supervisory models emerge from a best practices approach, a reform of the organisational structure of supervision in Europe may become necessary.
Solutions to IBM POWER8 verification challenges

This paper describes methods and techniques used to verify the POWER8™ microprocessor. The base concepts for the functional verification are those that have been already used in POWER7® processor verification. However, the POWER8 design point provided multiple new challenges that required innovative solutions. With approximately three times the number of transistors available, compared to the POWER7 processor chip, functionality was added by putting additional enhanced cores on-chip and by developing new features that intrinsically require more software interaction. The examples given in this paper demonstrate how new tools and the continuous improvement of existing methods addressed these verification challenges.
Flexible Kernel Independent Component Analysis Algorithm and its Local Stability on Feature Space

In this paper a novel flexible kernel independent component analysis (FKICA) algorithm is defined and its local stability on feature space is discussed. In the FKICA algorithm, the shape of nonlinear activation function in the learning algorithm varies depending on the Gaussian exponent, which is properly selected according to the kurtosis of estimated source in feature space. In the framework of the natural gradient in Stiefel manifold, the FKICA algorithm is visited and some results about its local stability analysis are presented
Automatic Driver Sleepiness Detection using Wrapper-Based Acoustic Between-Groups, Within-Groups, and Individual Feature Selection

This paper presents performance results, time complexities, and feature reduction aspects of three wrapperbased acoustic feature selection methods used for automatic sleepiness detection: Between-Groups Feature Selection (BGFS), Within-Groups Feature Selection (WGFS), and Individual Feature Selection (IFS) methods. Furthermore, two different methods are introduced for evaluating system performances. Our systems employ Interspeech 2011 Sleepiness Sub-Challenge’s “Sleepy Language Corpus” (SLC). The two tasks of the wrapper-based method, the feature subset evaluation and the feature space search, are performed by the Support Vector Machine classifier and a fast variant of the Best Incremental Ranked Subset algorithm, respectively. BGFS considers the feature space in Low Level Descriptor (LLD) groups, an acoustically meaningful division, allowing for significant reduction in time complexity of the computationally costly wrapper search cycles. WGFS considers the feature space within each LLD and generates the feature subset comprised of the best performing individual features among all LLDs. IFS regards the feature space individually. The best classification performance is obtained by BGFS which also achieves improvement over the Sub-Challenge baseline on the SLC test data.
The Effect of Nutritional Status on Outcome of Hospitalization in Paediatric Liver Disease Patients.

INTRODUCTION Liver is an important organ for metabolism. It has a major role in integrating the various biochemical pathways of metabolism. Thus, children with chronic liver disease are at high risk for developing undernutrition, with important prognostic implications. AIM To evaluate the nutritional status of hospitalized paediatric liver disease patients and its effect on outcome. MATERIALS AND METHODS We prospectively analysed the nutritional status of 59 consecutive patients during their first 24 hours of admission, at the Hepatology Unit, using the following indices: weight/age, height/age, weight/height, Body Mass Index (BMI), arm circumference and triceps skinfold, subcapular skinfold, and mid upper arm circumference. RESULTS According to the measurements: 35.6% were underweight, 49% were stunted, 10% were wasted by weight for length/height percentile and 5% were wasted by body mass index, 49% had percentage of ideal body weight below normal, 27% had head circumference below 3rd percentile, 59.4% had triceps skinfold thickness below 5th percentile, 66% had subscapular skinfold thickness below 5th percentile; 56% had arm circumference below 5th percentile. There was no correlation between these growth parameters and mortality. However, we found a positive correlation between decreased triceps skinfold thickness and prolonged hospital stay. Malnourished patients, according to triceps skinfold thickness, were significantly younger and they were the ones who suffered from cholestatic disorders of infancy. CONCLUSION Only triceps skinfold thickness was found to be a useful predictor for a prolonged hospital stay. Serial measurements may be more effective.
Advancing Community and Health Equity: Health and Wellbeing of U.S. Chinese Populations.

This JGMS special issue is designed to challenge the Asian American model minority myth, widen our knowledge base, and recom-mend research, practice, and policy changes regarding the health and wellbeing of the U.S. Chinese population through our collaborative Chinese Health, Aging, and Policy Program (CHAPP), within the context of two ongoing population-based epidemiological studies (the PINE study and the PIETY study) in the Chicago Chinese community. CHAPP is the result of a community-academic partnership founded on the guiding principles of community-based participatory research (CBPR). The research team is a result of a synergistic collaboration between academic partners and over 20 community-based organizations in the greater Chicago area. This approach has permitted us to implement and sustain multiple research studies and foster a continued reciprocal relationship between academic institu-tion and the greater Chinese community. The PINE study—the P opulation Study of Ch IN ese E lderly in Chicago ( 松年研究 , s ō ng nián yán ji ū )—is a longitudinal study initiated to investigate aging issues among Chinese older adults aged 60 years and older. With the first wave of PINE data collection from July 2011 to June 2013, 3,157 community-dwelling Chinese older adults were interviewed about a wide abuse incidence. Results revealed female sex, longer duration of resi-dence in the United States and preference of speaking Mandarin or English were significantly associated with risk of abuse incidence and
Loss of 3-D Shape Constancy in Interior Spaces: The Basis of the Ames-Room Illusion

The apparently rectangular form of the irregularly shaped Ames room is explained in terms of a loss of interior 3-D shape constancy consequent on viewing the room with one eye through a small specifically positioned aperture. In the absence of retinal disparity and motion parallax the appearance of the room is held to shift markedly toward the rectangular dimensions of its retinal image. Three experiments designed to test this explanation with a miniature (one-tenth size) version of the Ames room No 1 with the matched 2-D shape of the back wall and as an index of interior 3-D shape are reported. The experiments showed that interior constancy was almost fully restored with binocular viewing of the room (experiment 1). The effect with a ‘skeletal’ version of the room was about the same as that with the conventional version and was clearly evident when the back wall or its frame version was presented alone (experiment 2), and it varied according to whether the interior perspective corresponded with that of the Ames or a rectangular room (experiment 3). Experiment 3 also showed that a rectangular room is significantly distorted when the interior perspective accords with that of the Ames room. These outcomes are construed as supporting the loss-of-constancy explanation and as showing that the Ames-room effect is one of a class of illusions attributable to the absence of stimulus correlates that normally sustain visual shape constancy.
Creating Character Connections from Manga

We presented a method to create character connections from manga using the frequencies of characters and their co-occurrences by referring to frames. First, we input characters and frames with a data input tool. Second, we calculated the frequencies of characters and the relationships among characters and grouprelated characters. Third, we created character connections. Preliminary experiments using Dragon Ball vol. 32 suggest the usefulness of our approach.
Collusion detection in feedback-based reputation systems via temporal and social analysis

Nowadays, with the expansion of virtual spaces, interactions between anonymous users have also increased. These interactions can provide new opportunities and threats for users of this virtual spaces. One way to reduce these threats in such spaces is to use feedback-based reputation systems to estimate the trustworthiness of users. However, the feedback-based reputation systems are known to be particularly vulnerable to some kinds of attacks like collusion attacks between malicious user IDs. In this paper, a new method based on temporal and social analysis is proposed to deal with this kind of attack. In the proposed method, temporal analysis is used to detect users under attack as well as suspicious intervals in which the attacks have occurred with high probability; besides, social analysis can be used to distinguish between honest and malicious user IDs. The method used in the social analysis can be seen as the novelty of this paper whose main idea is the use of a small gap among the social graph of honest and malicious users to make a distinction between users in suspicious intervals. The experimental results proved that the proposed method has a better performance in distinguishing between honest and malicious users compared to earlier methods. This improvement in the performance can play a significant role in restoring and modifying users' reputations.
The International Audit Firms as New Entrants - an Empirical Analysis of Auditor Selection in Greece, 1993 to 1997

This paper investigates auditor choice in Greece in the five years subsequent to the 1992 liberalization of the audit market. We analyze auditor choices by 205 companies which, by 1997, represented almost 90% of the companies listed on the Athens Stock Exchange. We find that the level of shareholdings by foreign shareholders is positively associated with choice of a Big Six versus any other auditor both immediately after liberalization in 1993 and still in 1997, indicative of the role of the Big Six in providing audit credibility in the eyes of international investors. In addition, Big Six auditors strengthened their position in the finance sector and, outside the finance sector, among larger companies over the period studied. We also find that in both 1993 and 1997 Big Six firms were distinguished specifically from the second-tier international firms, consistent with the view that, in post-liberalization Greece, companies by their choice of auditor appear to be distinguishing Big Six firms from all others but not between second-tier international firms and local auditors. These findings shed light on the hitherto unresearched area of which companies Big Six auditors target in order to gain market share when they are new entrants in an environment radically changed by regulatory reform. In addition the research extends the auditor brand name reputation debate by its finding that, in post-liberalization Greece, second-tier international firms appear to be distinguished from the Big Six but not from the local audit firms.
IL‐10 mediates susceptibility to Leishmania donovani infection

Human visceral leishmaniasis (VL) results in a severe and potentially fatal systemic disease, accompanied by cellular immune depression. The production of IL‐10 correlates with ongoing diseaseand it has been suggested that the cellular immune depression that accompanies active disease may be due to a predominance of IL‐10 production rather than a lack of IFN‐γ production, which is essential for optimal macrophage activation and parasite elimination. To examine the role of IL‐10 in resistance during L. donovani infection (a causative agent of VL), the course of infection was examined in mice lacking the gene for IL‐10. BALB/c IL‐10‐/‐, as well as C57BL/6 IL‐10‐/‐ mice, were highly resistant to L. donovani infection, asevidenced by liver parasite burdens which were tenfold lower than those in control mice after 14 days of infection. Enhanced resistance was accompanied by increased production of IFN‐γ and nitric oxide in BALB/c IL‐10‐/‐ mice. Susceptibility to infection in BALB/c IL‐10‐/‐ mice was enhanced following in vivo treatment with a neutralizing antibody to IFN‐γ or IL‐12. Together these studies demonstrate for the first time that IL‐10 is a critical component of the immune response that inhibits resistance to L. donovani.