Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Enterobacterial fimbriae

Many different species of the family Enterobacteriaceae have been shown to possess fimbrial appendages which emerge from the bacterial cell as straight, rigid organelles distinct from flagella (14). The role of fimbriae (synonym: pili) as adhesins in both enterotoxigenic and uropathogenic isolates of Escherichia coli has been demnonstrated, and thus the identification of such appendages as virulence determinants was established. Enterotoxigenic E. coli strains possess a number of distinct antigenic types of fimbriae facilitating attachment to the epithelial cells of the gastrointestinal tract, and these have been reviewed in detail elsewhere (18). Similarly, the fimbrial adhesins of urinary isolates of E. coli and the role of these fimbriae ir facilitating colonization of uroepithelial cells have been the subject of extensive investigation (25, 32). Consequently, this review concentrates on recent developments as they pertain to fimbriae of members of the Enterobacteriaceae other than E. coli, and E. coli antigens will be considered only in comparison with heterologous fimbriae.
An Electrically-Driven, Large-Deflection, High-Force, Micro Piston Hydraulic Actuator Array for Large-Scale Microfluidic Systems

This paper describes a proof-of-concept all-electrical individually-addressable micro piston actuator array that produces high displacement and force by utilizing hydraulic amplification and electrostatic control. This new class of actuator arrays can remove a critical hurdle, pneumatic control ports to lab-on-chips, and achieve fully-integrated, large-scale, and all-electrical microfluidic systems. The fabricated actuator consists of a 3×3 array of 2×2mm2 membranes and produces maximum deflections of 35, 23, and 11 ¿m when hydraulicallydriven by piezoelectric actuation at 100, 80, 60V, respectively. The corresponding hydraulic amplification ratios are 3.2, 3, and 2.5, respectively. The array functions up to a frequency of 2Hz without failing, while allowing control over individual actuators by utilizing electrostatic latching at 100V. The active device part measures as 8.4×8.4×0.65mm3.
Dynamic modulation of the Fermi energy in suspended graphene backgated devices

ABSTRACT Freestanding (suspended) graphene films, with high electron mobility (up to ~200,000 cm2V−1s−1), good mechanical and electronic properties, could resolve many of the current issues that are hampering the upscaling of graphene technology. Thus far, attempts at reliably fabricating suspended graphene devices comprising metal contacts, have often been hampered by difficulties in exceeding sizes of 1 µm in diameter, if using UV lithography. In this work, area of suspended graphene large enough to be utilized in microelectronic devices, have been obtained by suspending a CVD graphene film over cavities, with top contacts defined through UV lithography with both wet and dry etching. An area of up to 160 µm2 can be fabricated as backgated devices. The suspended areas exhibit rippling of the surfaces which simultaneously introduces both tensile and compressive strain on the graphene film. Finally, the variations of the Fermi level in the suspended graphene areas can be modulated by applying a potential difference between the top contacts and the backgate. Having achieved large area suspended graphene, in a manner compatible with CMOS fabrication processes, together with enabling the modulation of the Fermi level, are substantial steps forward in demonstrating the potential of suspended graphene-based electronic devices and sensors. Graphical Abstract
The association between occupational lead exposure and serum cholesterol and lipoprotein levels.

OBJECTIVES This study sought to clarify the possible associations between blood lead level and serum cholesterol and lipoprotein levels in subjects occupationally exposed to lead. METHODS Levels of blood lead, serum total cholesterol, high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol, low-density lipoprotein cholesterol, and triglycerides in 56 male industrial employees who were exposed to lead were compared with those in 87 unexposed employees. RESULTS Mean blood lead levels were 42.3 (+/- 14.9) micrograms/dL in the exposed group and 2.7 (+/- 3.6) micrograms/dL in the nonexposed group. The exposed subjects had higher mean levels of total cholesterol and HDL cholesterol. CONCLUSIONS Blood lead levels are positively associated with total and HDL cholesterol.
9.6 A 3.9kHz-frame-rate capacitive touch system with pressure/tilt angle expressions of active stylus using multiple-frequency driving method for 65″ 104×64 touch screen panel

As the demand for interactive displays continues to increase, capacitive touch systems (CTSs) with stylus-based drawing have become indispensable [1–4]. Passive styli are widely used because of their low-cost implementation, but have low SNR and limited drawing expressions [1]. Active styli have gained interest to solve these problems [4]. The pressure of an active stylus can be expressed using a pressure-to-capacitance transducer [3,4], but the tilt angle has not been reported yet. In addition, analog front-end (AFE) ICs with high frame rates are in demand in response to the fast movements of finger and active styli. Conventional AFE ICs adopt a parallel driving method (PDM) to achieve high SNR, but suffer from low frame rates because the number of rows and columns of the driving matrix increases with the number of TX electrodes [3]. In this paper, an AFE IC with high frame rate using a multiple-frequency driving method (MFDM) is proposed for response to fast movements of fingers and active styli, while expressing both the pressure and tilt angle of the active stylus.
Order determination for frequency compensation of negative-feedback systems

To maximize the bandwidth of dedicated negative feedback amplifiers by passive frequency compensation, the order of the amplifier needs to be known. Here a method is introduced to determine the order of a circuit with negative feedback. It is shown that the slim of poles in the negative feedback loop, i.e. the loop poles, can be used to determine the order of the amplifier. These loop poles, can be found relatively easily from the circuit diagram and thus the order of the circuit is also relatively easily found.
Map-merging in Multi-robot Simultaneous Localization and Mapping Process Using Two Heterogeneous Ground Robots

In this article, a fast and reliable map-merging algorithm is proposed to produce a global two dimensional map of an indoor environment in a multi-robot simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) process. In SLAM process, to find its way in this environment, a robot should be able to determine its position relative to a map formed from its observations. To solve this complex problem, simultaneous localization and mapping methods are required. In large and complex environments, using a single robot is not reasonable because of the error accumulation and the time required. This can explain the tendency to employ multiple robots in parallel for this task. One of the challenges in the multi-robot SLAM is the map-merging problem. A centralized algorithm for map-merging is introduced in this research based on the features of local maps and without any knowledge about robots initial or relative positions. In order to validate the proposed merging algorithm, a medium scale experiment has been set up consisting of two heterogeneous mobile robots in an indoor environment equipped with laser sensors. The results indicate that the introduced algorithm shows good performance both in accuracy and fast map-merging.
Nursing workload and patient safety--a mixed method study with an ecological restorative approach.

OBJECTIVE The aim of this study was to analyze the potential association between nursing workload and patient safety in the medical and surgical inpatient units of a teaching hospital. METHOD a mixed method strategy (sequential explanatory design). RESULTS the initial quantitative stage of the study suggest that increases in the number of patients assigned to each nursing team lead to increased rates of bed-related falls, central line-associated bloodstream infections, nursing staff turnover, and absenteeism. During the subsequent qualitative stage of the research, the nursing team stressed medication administration, bed baths, and patient transport as the aspects of care that have the greatest impact on workload and pose the greatest hazards to patient, provider, and environment safety. CONCLUSIONS The findings demonstrated significant associations between nursing workload and patient safety. We observed that nursing staff with fewer patients presented best results of care-related and management-related patient safety indicators. In addition, the tenets of ecological and restorative thinking contributed to the understanding of some of the aspects in this intricate relationship from the standpoint of nursing providers. They also promoted a participatory approach in this study.
The 1918 influenza epidemic's effects on sex differentials in mortality in the United States.

The 1918 influenza epidemic had a marked and fairly long-lasting effect on the sex differential in mortality in the United States. After 1918 women lost most of their mortality advantage over men and the female/male gap did not regain its pre-epidemic level until the 1930s. An analysis of causes of deaths shows a link with tuberculosis. We conjecture the existence of a selection effect, whereby many 1918 influenza deaths were among tuberculous persons, so that tuberculosis death rates dropped in later years, disproportionately among males. Age- and sex-specific data by cause of death corroborate this hypothesis. Copyright 2000 by The Population Council, Inc.
A Collaborative Framework for Developing E-Government Emergency System

A collaborative framework for developing an e-government emergency system is proposed and built. There are abundant information processing mechanisms in the biological endocrine system (BES) including high level regulating mechanism to neural system, the emotional reacting mechanism, and the hormone reaction mechanism. With these mechanisms, BES has the features of self-learning, self-adaptive and self-collaborative etc. By learning the mechanisms in BES, resources and departments collaborate with each other in the e-government emergency system. The concerned respective government departments work together to detect, prevent, respond to, and recover from a disaster, which is consistent with the expectancy theory that maximizes positive outcomes and minimizes negative outcomes.
13.7 A reconfigurable sense amplifier with auto-zero calibration and pre-amplification in 28nm CMOS

This work presents an area-efficient and variation-tolerant small-signal differential sensing (VTS) scheme that modifies the conventional SA circuit to include: 1) a structure for on-the-fly, auto-zeroing offset compensation, 2) pre-amplification of bitline differential by reconfiguring the SA inverter pair as amplifiers, and 3) latching of the amplified voltage differential by returning the SA to its conventional cross-coupled configuration. The approach is demonstrated to improve SA robustness over conventional sensing at isosensing time without area overhead (Fig. 13.7.1). Conversely, sensing time can be reduced at iso-robustness and area. Measurements of a 28nm CMOS test chip show that an iso-area VTS scheme improves offset noise tolerance by -1. 2σVth or sensing speed by up to 42% at iso-robustness (<;0.3% failure rate).
Release of host‐derived membrane vesicles following pilus‐mediated adhesion of Neisseria gonorrhoeae

Following attachment of Neisseria gonorrhoeae to human epithelial cell lines, the cellular pilus receptor CD46 is shed from the cell and accumulates in the media. In this report, we assess Neisseria‐induced alterations in CD46 surface distribution and characterize this complement regulatory protein following its release from the infected cell. Within 3 h of attachment of gonococci to human epithelial cell lines, CD46 is enriched beneath sites of microcolony adhesion. By 6 h post infection, differential ultracentrifugation of culture media from ME‐180 monolayers resulted in sedimentation of structurally and functionally intact CD46. Electron microscopy of these 100 000 g pellets revealed 30–200 nm vesicles. These vesicles likely originated from the host cell as they contained additional host cell surface proteins including CD55 and the epidermal growth factor receptor. Further, these vesicles were visualized by quick‐freeze, deep‐etch electron microscopy in association with the surface of infected ME‐180 cells and with pili of adherent gonococci. Like CD46 shedding, CD46 redistribution and vesicle release were insensitive to colchicine and cytochalasin‐D but dependent on expression of the pilus retraction protein PilT. This vesiculation may represent a host cell defence response in which surface proteins that are commonly exploited by pathogens, such as CD46, are removed from the cell.
Integration of multiple data sources for gene network inference using genetic perturbation data

Background The inference of gene regulatory networks is of great interest and has various applications. The recent advances in high-throughout biological data collection have facilitated the construction and understanding of gene regulatory networks in many model organisms. However, the inference of gene networks from large-scale human genomic data can be challenging. Generally, it is difficult to identify the correct regulators for each gene in the large search space, given that the high dimensional gene expression data only provides a small number of observations for each gene. Results We present a Bayesian approach integrating external data sources with knockdown data from human cell lines to infer gene regulatory networks. In particular, we assemble multiple data sources including gene expression data, genome-wide binding data, gene ontology, known pathways and use a supervised learning framework to compute prior probabilities of regulatory relationships. We show that our integrated method improves the accuracy of inferred gene networks. We apply our method to two different human cell lines, which illustrates the general scope of our method. Conclusions We present a flexible and systematic framework for external data integration that improves the accuracy of human gene network inference while retaining efficiency. Integrating various data sources of biological information also provides a systematic way to build on knowledge from existing literature.
Dual-element needle transducer for intravascular ultrasound imaging

Abstract. A dual-element needle transducer for intravascular ultrasound imaging has been developed. A low-frequency element and a high-frequency element were integrated into one device to obtain images which conveyed both low- and high-frequency information from a single scan. The low-frequency element with a center frequency of 48 MHz was fabricated from the single crystal form of lead magnesium niobate-lead titanate solid solution with two matching layers (MLs) and the high frequency element with a center frequency of 152 MHz was fabricated from lithium niobate with one ML. The measured axial and lateral resolutions were 27 and 122 μm, respectively, for the low-frequency element, and 14 and 40 μm, respectively, for the high-frequency element. The performance of the dual-element needle transducer was validated by imaging a tissue-mimicking phantom with lesion-mimicking area, and ex vivo rabbit aortas in water and rabbit whole blood. The results suggest that a low-frequency element effectively provides depth resolved images of the whole vessel and its adjacent tissue, and a high-frequency element visualizes detailed structure near the surface of the lumen wall in the presence of blood within the lumen. The advantages of a dual-element approach for intravascular imaging are also discussed.
Determination of Body Composition in Children and Adolescents: Validation of Bioelectrical Impedance with Isotope Dilution Technique

The determination of body composition as part of the clinical and auxologic follow up of childhood growth disorders necessitates the use of a quick, portable, reliable and simple non-invasive method. The present study was undertaken to validate bioelectrical conductance, height2/resistance (Ht2/R), against isotopically determined total body water (TBW) using heavy water tracer H2[18O]. The subjects (n = 56) consisted of normal children, children with various endocrine disorders, and young adults between the ages of 8-26 years. Isotopically determined TBW and fat free mass (FFM) were highly correlated with Ht2/R (r = 0.94, p = < 0.001, and r = 0.94, p = < 0.001, respectively). In a multiple regression analysis, 96% of the variability in FFM in normal subjects could be predicted by the following equation: FFM = 0.524 Ht2/R + 0.415 Wt-0.32, while in the group of patients by FFM = 0.659 Ht2/R + 0.254 Wt + 2.851. These data suggest that bioelectrical impedance measurements give valid and reliable estimates of FFM in children and adolescents. This easy technique could be incorporated in the auxologic follow up of children on hormone therapy.
ELECTRON MICROSCOPY OF CELLULAR DIVISION IN ESCHERICHIA COLI

Conti, S. F. (Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, N. Y.) and M. E. Gettner. Electron microscopy of cellular division in Escherichia coli. J. Bacteriol. 83:544–550. 1962. —Exponentially growing cells of Escherichia coli were fixed in formalin, exposed to uranyl nitrate, dehydrated at low temperatures with ethanol, and embedded in methacrylate. Polymerization was carried out at −70 C, by exposure of specimens to radiation from a cobalt60 source. Electron micrographs revealed that cellular division occurs by the centripetal growth of the cell wall. The fine structure of the cytoplasm, nuclear apparatus, cell wall, and cytoplasmic membrane was also studied.
Influence of capping ligands on the assembly of quantum dots and their properties

ABSTRACT In order to understand the effect of capping ligand on optical and electrical properties of semiconductor quantum dots (QDs), we have added liquid crystal (8CB) to the CdSe/CdS/ZnS QDs monolayer formed via the Langmuir Blodgett technique And studied emission spectra and conducting properties of resulting QDs. The assembly of QDs monolayer modified by liquid crystal (8CB) can be tuned by varying the temperature. The mechanism of the influence of capping ligands on the gap energy, dipole moment and charge distribution within (CdSe)13 cluster was studied via quantum chemical calculations, i.e. we have used density functional theory to systematically investigate the equilibrium configuration of QDs passivated by oleic acid and liquid crystal ligands. GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT
Retrieval of Ocean Wind Speed Using Airborne Reflected GNSS Signals

This paper develops the models that can be used in different flight scenarios to retrieve the wind speed using the width of the normalized delay waveform (NDW). First, the factors that influence the NDW width, including the wind speed, wind direction, flight height, and elevation angle, are analyzed. The contribution of each independent variable to the regression is explored. The results show that the wind speed, flight height, and elevation angle contribute more significantly than the wind direction so the wind direction can be ignored in the model. The multiple regression, in which the function terms of NWD width, flight height, and elevation angle above are taken as independent variables and wind speed is taken as the dependent variable, is proposed to develop the model of retrieving wind speed. Through the simulation, a root-mean-square error (RMSE) over 3 m/s can be obtained. In order to improve the retrieval performance, a Back-Propagation (BP) network is trained as an alternative to the analytical models above. Better performance is achieved with an RMSE less than 2.5 m/s under the same conditions with the analytical model. The errors of retrieved wind speed are analyzed. The conclusions are that: 1) both analytical model and BP network have inherent regression biases, especially for high wind speed from 15 to 20m/s so that at wind speeds higher than 16 m/s, the tendency for retrieval accuracy to rapidly become worse appears and 2) the number of incoherent averaging should be over 1000 to reduce the impact of thermal and speckle noise. At the end of the paper, airborne data are processed to retrieve wind speed utilizing proposed models and the matching method to compare in-situ wind speed from the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) Climate Forecast System (CFS). By comparing the retrieval results, the proposed methods could obtain the accuracy with the same level of matching method.
The Influence of Exercise Order on Blood Lactate, Perceptual, and Affective Responses

Bellezza, PA, Hall, EE, Miller, PC, and Bixby, WR. The influence of exercise order on blood lactate, perceptual, and affective responses. J Strength Cond Res 23(1): 203-208, 2009-The purpose of this study was to examine the influence of exercise order on blood lactate, perceptual, and affective responses to resistance exercise. Twenty-nine subjects (18 women, 11 men; 20.9 ± 1.9 years) completed three sessions separated by a minimum of 48 hours. Session 1 determined the 10-repetition maximum (10RM) for nine resistance exercises. During sessions 2 and 3, exercises were completed in either a large to small or small to large muscle exercise order. The large to small muscle order was 1) chest press, 2) leg press, 3) rows, 4) leg extension, 5) overhead press, 6) hamstring curl, 7) biceps curl, 8) calve raise, and 9) triceps extension. Exercise order was reversed for the small to large condition. Participants performed two sets of each lift, with the first set being a warm-up at 80% 10RM, followed by one set at 100% 10RM with 1 minute of rest between each exercise. Rating of perceived exertion (RPE) was measured after completion of the second set. Blood lactate was recorded after exercises 1, 5, and 9. Affective measures were completed pre, during, post 0, and post 10 minutes. Lactate showed a significant time (p < 0.001) and condition × time interaction (p = 0.020). A significant difference was seen in average number of repetitions completed between sequences, with small to large performing more. There were no differences seen between exercise orders for average RPE. Analyses of Feeling Scale and Felt Arousal Scale scores showed only a significant main effect of time. A paired-sample t-test was conducted to examine differences in Feeling Scale for the two conditions at the different time points. Significant differences were found for Feeling Scale during exercise (after overhead press) and at post 10, with the small to large exercise order having greater Feeling Scale responses. No significant correlations were seen between blood lactate and perceptual or affective responses at any time point or in either exercise order. These findings may suggest that small to large exercise order may have beneficial physiological and psychological outcomes and potentially influence exercise adherence.