Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Biofilm Formation and Interaction with the Surfaces of Gallstones by Salmonella spp

ABSTRACT Salmonellae can exist in an asymptomatic carrier state in the human gallbladder. Individuals with gallstones are more likely to become typhoid carriers, and antibiotic treatments are often ineffectual against Salmonella enterica serovar Typhi in carriers with gallstones. Therefore, we hypothesized that Salmonella spp. form biofilms on the surfaces of gallstones, where the bacteria are protected from high concentrations of bile and antibiotics. A number of methods were utilized to examine biofilm formation on human gallstones and glass coverslips in vitro, including confocal, light, and scanning electron microscopy. In our assays, salmonellae formed full biofilms on the surfaces of gallstones within 14 days and appeared to excrete an exopolysaccharide layer that bound them to the surfaces and to other bacteria. Efficient biofilm formation on gallstones was dependent upon the presence of bile, as a biofilm did not form on gallstones within 14 days in Luria-Bertani broth alone. The biofilms formed by a Salmonella enterica serovar Typhi Vi antigen mutant, as well as strains with mutations in genes that eliminate production of four different fimbriae, were indistinguishable from the biofilms formed by the parents. Mutants with an incomplete O-antigen, mutants that were nonmotile, and mutants deficient in quorum sensing were unable to develop complete biofilms. In addition, there appeared to be selectivity in salmonella binding to the gallstone surface that did not depend on the topology or surface architecture. These studies should aid in the understanding of the Salmonella carrier state, an important but underresearched area of typhoid fever pathogenesis. If the basis of carrier development can be understood, it may be possible to identify effective strategies to prevent or treat this chronic infection.
A study on relationship between brand loyalty and customer service in insurance companies companies. The case of Macedonia and Albania

Despite of remarkable interests in the nature and role of marketing application from servicing perspective, there are limited researches on service branding. By describing four major aspects of service branding, present study studies these aspects and their impacts on service conceived quality and finally it investigates the impact of service conceived quality on customer loyalty. Represented model includes the impact of brand traditional image along with other three impacts, that is, company image, employees‘ confidence and company‘s confidence. By using a 100-subject sample of Albania and Macedonia Insurance Company‘s customers, the analyses show that brand image and company‘s image have direct and positive impact on service conceived quality while a significant relationship is not seen between company‘ confidence and employees‘ confidence with service quality. Finally, the aspects of service brand impacts indirectly on customers‘ loyalty via impacting on service conceived quality. The positive impact on brand image and company‘s image on service conceived quality are too important due to the fact these two service brand aspects are highly impacted by external marketing as well as the importance of external marketing and throughout campaigns for insurance company via radio, TV and other mass media. In one hand, since most insurance companies are similar in terms of provided services, one can distinguish the special brand of Albanian and Macedonian Insurance in terms of special discounts, discounts on simultaneous usage of several types of insurance, etc. On the other hand, increasing the accessibility to services throug h opening further affiliated branches and full explanations of insurance services – that are typically varied and detailed – in guiding brochures and notebooks lead into customers‘ awareness and finally into a separated mindset and a positive and effective service brand for the company.
Indoor 3D Full Polarimetric Bistatic Spherical Facility for Electromagnetic Tests

A new indoor facility for electromagnetic measurements has been developed and built at the Detectability and Electronic Warfare Laboratory, INTA, Spain. The system was designed to extend the previous capabilities so that not only monostatic but also bistatic radar cross section (RCS) tests could be easily conducted. Due to limited space, far-field radar cross sections in the system are restricted to small targets, but this layout will allow the researchers to investigate ReS near-field-to-far-field transformations. The system was also conceived to be versatile enough to carry out other tests, such as near-field antenna measurements, material-absorption measurements, and electromagnetic characterization of materials. The paper describes the novel concept behind the facility, and presents some preliminary measurement results on different applications.
Trust in Networks and Clusters

It is widely accepted that technological change underpins a global economy and that geographic location and concentration is of foremost importance for regional development and competitive advantage. The realities of global competition require an understanding on the local level of global markets and the complexities of interactions with multiple stakeholders along global supply and value chains. There is increasing evidence that
Migration and Servicification: Do Immigrant Employees Spur Firm Exports of Services?

Services play an increasingly important role in production, employment and international trade but are subject to substantially higher trade costs relative to manufactured goods. Knowledge of how these trade costs can be mitigated is important for facilitating trade of services. In this paper, we analyse the role of immigrant employees as facilitators of firm exports of services, a role that remains largely unexamined. We bridge the gap in existing research by drawing on new data for nearly 30,000 Swedish firms during the period 1998–2007 within a heterogeneous firm framework. The results have important policy implications. As the multilateral approach to facilitating trade is challenged and more countries are imposing measures to restrict the cross‐country mobility of people, policymakers may need to find new ways to promote exports of services. Our results indicate that immigrant employees spur firms' export of services activities: hiring one additional foreign‐born worker can increase services exports by approximately 2.5 per cent, on average, with a stronger effect found for skilled and newly arrived immigrants. Therefore, policymakers could leverage the findings of this study to implement initiatives that utilise high‐skilled immigrants to promote services exports.
A Framework for Structuring Learning Assessment in a Massively Multiplayer Online Educational Game: Experiment Centered Design

Educational games offer an opportunity to engage and inspire students to take interest in science, technology, engineering, and mathematical STEM subjects. Unobtrusive learning assessment techniques coupled with machine learning algorithms can be utilized to record students' in-game actions and formulate a model of the students' knowledge without interrupting the students' play. This paper introduces "Experiment Centered Assessment Design" XCD, a framework for structuring a learning assessment feedback loop. XCD builds on the "Evidence Centered Assessment Design" ECD approach, which uses tasks to elicit evidence about students and their learning. XCD defines every task as an experiment in the scientific method, where an experiment maps a test of factors to observable outcomes. This XCD framework was applied to prototype quests in a massively multiplayer online MMO educational game. Future work would build upon the XCD framework and use machine learning techniques to provide feedback to students, teachers, and researchers.
Fc-Epsilon Receptor (CD23) Expressing Follicular Dendritic Cells as a Main Prognostic Factor in Follicular Lymphoma

Fc-epsilon receptor (CD23)-expressing follicular dendritic cells is a main prognostic factor in follicular lymphoma. Falaleeva N. A. , Osmanov E. A. , Tupitsyn N. N. Federal State Budgetary Institute N. N. Blokhin Russian Cancer Research Center, Health Ministry of Russian Federation, Moscow, Russia SUMMARY Follicular dendritic cells, expressing FceRII or CD23 (FceRIIFDCs) as a component of non-tumor environment have been studied in 232 follicular lymphoma (FL) patients. FceRIIFDCs were found in 87.5% of follicular lymphoma cases and were associated with a nodular pattern of tumor growth (p = 0.000), but not the cytological grade of lymphoma. There were no associations of FceRIIFDC with clinical prognostic factors (FLIPI indices) or with bone marrow involvement in FL patients by histology. The presence of FceRIIFDCs in tumor tissue was an independent prognostic factor according to treatment results, i.e. frequency of CR, duration of OS and PFS. Bone marrow involvement significantly worsened the prognosis in FceRIIFDC-positive group of patients. We suggest a new prognostic index (FDC-IP) that allows biochemical identification of the following patient groups: FceRIIFDC-positive patients without bone marrow involvement (good prognosis), FceRIIF-DC-positive patients with bone marrow involvement (intermediate prognosis), FceRIIFDC-negative patients (poor prognosis). These 3 groups significantly differ (p = 0.000) both in OS and in PFS. This is the first evidence of the possibility to assess tumor behavior and treatment results in FL according to lymphoma biochemical and other than clinical parameters.
Brain Injury in the Infant: The Old, the New, and the Uncertain

Although neonatal brain injury occurs most frequently after a perinatal hypoxic-ischemic insult, recently studies have noted that variable causes such as metabolic and reperfusion events can result in, or aggravate, a brain insult. Current data suggest that about 2 to 5 of 1000 live births in the United States and more so in developing countries experience a brain injury Approximately 20% to 40% of infants who survive the brain injury develop significant neurological and developmental impairments. The resulting impact on the child, family, and society presents a formidable challenge to healthcare professionals. Although several important insights have been gained in the last several years about the epidemiology, diagnosis, and mechanism of brain injury, management remains mostly a cocktail of controversial trials. This article provides a comprehensive review of the pathology, clinical manifestations, and timely management of infants with brain injury.
A clinical evaluation of serum angiotensin converting enzyme in sarcoidosis.

Angiotensin converting enzyme was measured in the serum of 52 patients with sarcoidosis, 67 healthy control subjects and 64 patients with pulmonary and non-pulmonary diseases. The patients with sarcoidosis were classified on clinical grounds as having active or inactive disease. In 26 patients with active sarcoidosis not taking corticosteroids the mean serum ACE was significantly higher than in normal controls (P less than 0 . 001). 73% of these patients had elevated serum ACE. Only two out of 12 (17%) patients with inactive sarcoidosis not taking corticosteroids had elevated serum ACE. Serum ACE was normal in patients taking oral corticosteroids for longer than two weeks. Eighty per cent of patients with active sarcoidosis with radiological evidence of pulmonary parenchymal involvement had an elevated serum ACE compared to 25% in patients with normal chest X-rays and 60% of those with bilateral hilar lymphadenopathy. All sarcoid patients with hypercalcaemia had elevated serum ACE whereas only half of those with normal serum calcium had elevated ACE. In the patients with other thoracic and granulomatous conditions serum ACE was normal or rarely marginally elevated. Serum ACE appears to be of value in the diagnosis of active sarcoidosis.
Consumer Resilience and Consumer Attitude Towards Traumatic Events

The purpose of this study is to explore consumer resilience’s role and effect on the relationship between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and consumer attitude. There is little research on consumer resilience in the marketing disciplines even though the relevance of the construct has increased in other fields of study. To explore the role and effect of resilience, this study developed hypothetical conditions, in which this study assumes that each respondent is exposed to news of a traumatic incident or an experience, such as a terrorist attack or gun violence. Confirmatory factor analysis is conducted to verify each construct’s validity, and partial least squares structural equation modelling is performed to verify the model fit. Ordinary least squares (OLS) and path analyses are employed to test each hypothesis in this study. The findings show that CSR has a positive association with consumer attitudes and resilience. More importantly, the findings show that consumer resilience helps consumers improve their attitudes, and consumer attitudes are affected differently by the level of resilience.
Effects of Reagent and Enzymatically Generated Hypochlorite on Physicochemical and Metabolic Properties of High Density Lipoproteins*

Myeloperoxidase (MPO), a protein secreted by activated phagocytes, may be a potential candidate for the generation of modified/oxidized lipoproteins in vivo via intermediate formation of HOCl, a powerful oxidant. During the present study, the effects of reagent NaOCl and OCl− generated by the MPO/H2O2/Cl− system on physicochemical and metabolic properties of high density lipoprotein (HDL) subclass 3 (HDL3) were investigated. Up to a molar oxidant:lipoprotein ratio of approximately 30:1, apolipoprotein A-I (apoA-I), the major HDL3 apolipoprotein component, represented the preferential target for OCl− attack (consuming 35–76% of the oxidant), thereby protecting HDL3 fatty acids (consuming between 17 and 30% of the oxidant) against OCl−-mediated modification. At molar oxidant:HDL3 ratios ≥ 60:1, we have observed pronounced consumption of HDL3 unsaturated fatty acids with concomitant formation of fatty acid chlorohydrins. Modification of HDL3 in the presence of the MPO/H2O2/Cl− system resulted in amino acid oxidation in a manner comparable with that found with reagent NaOCl only. Treatment of HDL3 with reagent NaOCl as well as modification by the MPO/H2O2/Cl− system resulted in significantly enhanced turnover rates of HDL3 by mouse peritoneal macrophages, an effect that was not a result of HDL3 aggregation as judged by dynamic and static light-scattering experiments. In comparison with native HDL3, the degradation by macrophages was enhanced by 4- and 15-fold when HDL3 was modified with reagent NaOCl or the MPO/H2O2/Cl− system. Finally, the ability of HDL3 to promote cellular cholesterol efflux from macrophages was significantly diminished after modification with reagent NaOCl. Collectively, these results demonstrate that the modification of HDL3 by hypochlorite (added as reagent or generated by the MPO/H2O2/Cl−system) transformed an antiatherogenic lipoprotein particle into a modified lipoprotein with characteristics similar to lipoproteins commonly thought to initiate foam cell formation in vivo.
Competency Mapping of the Employees- A Study

Competency mapping, the buzz word in any industry is not complicated as it may appear. At the heart of any successful activity lies a competence or skill. In the recent years, various thought leaders in business strategy have emphasized the need to identify what competencies a business needs, in order to compete in a specific environment. Competency mapping is a strategic HR framework for monitoring the performance and development of human resource in organizations.Regardless of whatever happens to the future of software in India, the people who are outstanding in their performance will continue to be in demand and will keep rising and for this the human resource of each organization should develop the competencies which they have in order to compete with the highly competitive market. In this paper the researcher has collected data from 195 software employees. Where in 145 employees where from Cognizant Technology Solutions (CTS) and the rest 150 respondents were form Hindustan Technology Limited (HCL) and their competencies where studied in depth to bridge the gap of the lacking competency which would help the employees to outshine which would help the organization to lead its goal through its objectives.
Parents With Doubts About Vaccines: Which Vaccines and Reasons Why

OBJECTIVES. The goals were (1) to obtain national estimates of the proportions of parents with indicators of vaccine doubt, (2) to identify factors associated with those parents, compared with parents reporting no vaccine doubt indicators, (3) to identify the specific vaccines that prompted doubt and the reasons why, and (4) to describe the main reasons parents changed their minds about delaying or refusing a vaccine for their child. METHODS. Data were from the National Immunization Survey (2003–2004). Groups included parents who ever got a vaccination for their child although they were not sure it was the best thing to do (“unsure”), delayed a vaccination for their child (“delayed”), or decided not to have their child get a vaccination (“refused”). RESULTS. A total of 3924 interviews were completed. Response rates were 57.9% in 2003 and 65.0% in 2004. Twenty-eight percent of parents responded yes to ever experiencing ≥1 of the outcome measures listed above. In separate analyses for each outcome measure, vaccine safety concern was a predictor for unsure, refused, and delayed parents. The largest proportions of unsure and refused parents chose varicella vaccine as the vaccine prompting their concern, whereas delayed parents most often reported “not a specific vaccine” as the vaccine prompting their concern. Most parents who delayed vaccines for their child did so for reasons related to their child's illness, unlike the unsure and refused parents. The largest proportion of parents who changed their minds about delaying or not getting a vaccination for their child listed “information or assurances from health care provider” as the main reason. CONCLUSIONS. Parents who exhibit doubts about immunizations are not all the same. This research suggests encouraging children's health care providers to solicit questions about vaccines, to establish a trusting relationship, and to provide appropriate educational materials to parents.
Network Selection for Cognitive Radio Based on Fuzzy Learning

Cognitive radio is a promising approach to ensuring the coexistence of heterogeneous wireless networks since it can perceive wireless conditions and freely switch among different network modes. When there are many network opportunities, how to decide the appropriate network selection for CR user's current service is the main problem we study in this paper. We make full use of the intelligent characteristic of CR user and propose a fuzzy learning based network selection scheme, in which the network selection choice is made based on the estimated evaluations of available networks. Multiple factors are considered when estimating these evaluations. Both the outer environment factors directly sensed by CR user (signal strength of the available network and network mode), and also the factor that cannot be determined beforehand and is learnt by our scheme (the bandwidth allocated by the optional network) are considered. From several interactions with the wireless environment, the experience of network selection behavior is accumulated which will direct our scheme to make a proper decision of the network. Two simulations verify that our scheme could not only guarantee a better bandwidth requirement of CR user compared with other three network selection methods, but also shows it to be a reasonable scheme for utilizing the available resources of these networks.
Lytro Camera Second Lens First Lens Microscope Objective Object : Resolution Target Photographs of specimens

We explore the use of inexpensive consumer lightfield camera technology for the purpose of light-field microscopy. Our experiments are based on the Lytro (first generation) camera. Unfortunately, the optical systems of the Lytro and those of microscopes are not compatible, leading to a loss of light-field information due to angular and spatial vignetting when directly recording microscopic pictures. We therefore consider an adaptation of the Lytro optical system. We demonstrate that using the Lytro directly as an ocular replacement, leads to unacceptable spatial vignetting. However, we also found a setting that allows the use of the Lytro camera in a virtual imaging mode which prevents the information loss to a large extent. We analyze the new virtual imaging mode and use it in two different setups for implementing light-field microscopy using a Lytro camera. As a practical result, we show that the camera can be used for low magnification work, as e.g. common in quality control, surface characterization, etc. We achieve a maximum spatial resolution of about 6. 25μm, albeit at a limited SNR for the side views.
Recognition using SIFT and its Variants on Improved Segmented Iris

Iris is one of the most reliable biometric traits due to its stability and randomness. Iris is transformed to polar coordinates by the conventional recognition systems. They perform well for the cooperative databases, but the performance deteriorates for the non-cooperative irises. In addition to this, aliasing effect is introduced as a result of transforming iris to polar domain. In this thesis, these issues are addressed by considering annular iris free from noise due to eyelids. This thesis presents several SIFT based methods for extracting distinctive invariant features from iris that can be used to perform reliable matching between different views of an object or scene. After localization of the iris, Scale Invariant Feature Transform (SIFT) is used to extract the local features. The SIFT descriptor is a widely used method for matching image features. But SIFT is found out to be computationally very complex. So we use another keypoint descriptor, Speeded up Robust Features (SURF), which is found to be computationally more efficient and produces better results than the SIFT. Both SIFT and SURF has the problem of false pairing. This has been overcome by using Fourier transform with SIFT (called F-SIFT) to obtain the keypoint descriptor and Phase-Only Correlation for feature matching. F-SIFT was found to have better accuracy than both SIFT and SURF as the problem of false pairing is significantly reduced. We also propose a new method called S-SIFT where we used S Transform with SIFT to obtain the keypoint descriptor for the image and Phase-Only Correlation for the feature matching. In the thesis we provide a comparative analysis of these four methods (SIFT, SURF, F-SIFT, S-SIFT) for feature extraction in iris.