Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Antibiotic sensitivities of Neisseria meningitidis isolates from patients and carriers in Greece

SUMMARY Usage of antibiotics in southern Europe is less well regulated than in northern countries. The proportion (48%) of meningococci in Spain insensitive to penicillin (MIC ≥ 0·1 mg/l) prompted this investigation of antibiotic sensitivities of isolates from Greek patients with meningitis (31) and carriers (47 school-children and 472 recruits). The agar dilution method was used to determine MIC to penicillin G (PN), sulphamethoxazole (SU), rifampicin (RF), cefaclor (CF) and ciprofloxacin (CP). The proportion of isolates insensitive to PN was 48% for isolates from patients, 19% from school-children and 36·6% from recruits. Resistance to SU (MIC ≥ 16 mg/l) was found in 16% of those from patients, 10·6% from children and 40% from recruits. None of the isolates from patients was resistant to RF (≥ 1 mg/l) but 6% of those from carriers were. Resistance to CF (≥ 4 mg/l) was found in 9·2% of patient isolates, 6·4% from children and 23·7% from recruits. All isolates except one were sensitive to CP (MIC range < 0·0015–0·125 mg/l). Resistances to PN, SU and RF were analysed by serogroup, serotype and subtype of the bacteria. The proportion of resistant isolates showed some variation between different areas of Greece, but it was not statistically significant.
Nonclassical Regulation of Transcription: Interchromosomal Interactions at the Malic enzyme Locus of Drosophila melanogaster

Regulation of transcription can be a complex process in which many cis- and trans-interactions determine the final pattern of expression. Among these interactions are trans-interactions mediated by the pairing of homologous chromosomes. These trans-effects are wide ranging, affecting gene regulation in many species and creating complex possibilities in gene regulation. Here we describe a novel case of trans-interaction between alleles of the Malic enzyme (Men) locus in Drosophila melanogaster that results in allele-specific, non-additive gene expression. Using both empirical biochemical and predictive bioinformatic approaches, we show that the regulatory elements of one allele are capable of interacting in trans with, and modifying the expression of, the second allele. Furthermore, we show that nonlocal factors—different genetic backgrounds—are capable of significant interactions with individual Men alleles, suggesting that these trans-effects can be modified by both locally and distantly acting elements. In sum, these results emphasize the complexity of gene regulation and the need to understand both small- and large-scale interactions as more complete models of the role of trans-interactions in gene regulation are developed.
Models of Individual Dietary Behavior Based on Smartphone Data: The Influence of Routine, Physical Activity, Emotion, and Food Environment

Introduction Smartphone applications (apps) facilitate the collection of data on multiple aspects of behavior that are useful for characterizing baseline patterns and for monitoring progress in interventions aimed at promoting healthier lifestyles. Individual-based models can be used to examine whether behavior, such as diet, corresponds to certain typological patterns. The objectives of this paper are to demonstrate individual-based modeling methods relevant to a person’s eating behavior, and the value of such approach compared to typical regression models. Method Using a mobile app, 2 weeks of physical activity and ecological momentary assessment (EMA) data, and 6 days of diet data were collected from 12 university students recruited from a university in Kunming, a rapidly developing city in southwest China. Phone GPS data were collected for the entire 2-week period, from which exposure to various food environments along each subject’s activity space was determined. Physical activity was measured using phone accelerometry. Mobile phone EMA was used to assess self-reported emotion/feelings. The portion size of meals and food groups was determined from voice-annotated videos of meals. Individual-based regression models were used to characterize subjects as following one of 4 diet typologies: those with a routine portion sizes determined by time of day, those with portion sizes that balance physical activity (energy balance), those with portion sizes influenced by emotion, and those with portion sizes associated with food environments. Results Ample compliance with the phone-based behavioral assessment was observed for all participants. Across all individuals, 868 consumed food items were recorded, with fruits, grains and dairy foods dominating the portion sizes. On average, 218 hours of accelerometry and 35 EMA responses were recorded for each participant. For some subjects, the routine model was able to explain up to 47% of the variation in portion sizes, and the energy balance model was able to explain over 88% of the variation in portion sizes. Across all our subjects, the food environment was an important predictor of eating patterns. Generally, grouping all subjects into a pooled model performed worse than modeling each individual separately. Conclusion A typological modeling approach was useful in understanding individual dietary behaviors in our cohort. This approach may be applicable to the study of other human behaviors, particularly those that collect repeated measures on individuals, and those involving smartphone-based behavioral measurement.
Image Classification with a Novel Semantic Linear-Time Graph Kernel

Image classification is currently a vital and challenging topic in computer vision. Although it has been achieved many classification algorithms so far, the classification of natural images still remains great difficulties in image processing. In this paper, we propose a semantic linear-time graph kernel for image classification. Each image is represented by a graph and the vertex of each graph corresponds to a segmented region. The semantic graph kernel can be used to compute similarities of graphs efficiently. The performance of the proposed graph kernel is demonstrated via a comparative performance assessment which is carried out on two large natural image databases. Experimental results show both the efficiency and precision of the proposed algorithm are better than those of histogram-based image classification which are carried out on Support Vector Machines (SVMs).
Which updates during an equity crowdfunding campaign increase crowd participation?

Start-ups often post updates during equity crowdfunding campaigns. However, little is known about the effects of such updates on crowd participation. We investigate this question by using hand-collected data from 71 funding campaigns and 39,399 investment decisions on two German equity crowdfunding portals. Using a combination of different empirical research techniques, we find that posting an update has a significant positive effect on the number of investments made by the crowd and the investment amount collected by the start-up. This effect does not occur immediately in its entirety; rather, it lags the update by a few days. Furthermore, the effect of updates loses statistical significance with the number of updates posted during a campaign. We also find that an easier language used in updates increases crowd participation, whereas the length of updates has no effects. With respect to the update’s content, we find that the positive effect can be attributed to updates about new developments of the start-up such as campaign developments, new funding, business developments, and cooperation projects. Updates on the start-up team, business model, product developments, and promotional campaigns do not have meaningful effects. Our paper contributes to the literature on the effects of information disclosure on equity crowdfunding participation. Furthermore, our results have practical implications for start-ups and their investor communication during equity crowdfunding campaigns.
Passenger recognition system based on body pressure distribution information

Passenger recognition system is subsystem of car airbag system. It would auxiliary control airbag work. Airbag won't burst out when automobile is colliding if passenger is child or short man. The passenger recognition is distinguished based on body pressure distribution data collected from body pressure sensor signal. Passenger recognition system consists of test bed, collecting subsystem of body pressure data, data analysis subsystem, neural network recognition subsystem and airbag controlled subsystem, etc. Test results show the system can be effective to control airbag work.
Reconfiguration and module replacement in Argus: theory and practice

Early work on reconfiguration of distributed applications was carried out as part of the Argus project at MIT. In this paper, we review that work, focusing on correctness conditions and on alternative implementations, and discuss lessons learnt, not only about the reconfiguration system, but also about language design for supporting reconfigurable systems.
Prevalence of Wheelchair and Scooter Use Among Community-Dwelling Canadians

Background Mobility impairments are the third leading cause of disability for community-dwelling Canadians. Wheelchairs and scooters help compensate for these challenges. There are limited data within the last decade estimating the prevalence of wheelchair and scooter use in Canada. Objective The aims of this study were: (1) to estimate the prevalence of wheelchair and scooter use in Canada and (2) to explore relevant demographic characteristics of wheelchair and scooter users. Design This study was a secondary analysis of a cross-sectional national survey. Methods The Canadian Survey on Disability (2012) collected data on wheelchair and scooter use from community-dwelling individuals aged 15 years and over with a self-identified activity limitation on the National Household Survey. Prevalence estimates were calculated as weighted frequencies, with cross-tabulations to determine the number of wheelchair and scooter users in Canada, by province, and demographic characteristics (ie, age, sex) and bootstrapping to estimate the variance of all point estimates. Results There were approximately 288,800 community-dwelling wheelchair and scooter users aged 15 years and over, representing 1.0% of the Canadian population. The sample included 197,560 manual wheelchair users, 42,360 powered wheelchair users, and 108,550 scooter users. Wheelchair and scooter users were predominantly women, with a mean age of 65 years. Approximately 50,620 individuals used a combination of 2 different types of devices. Limitations The results are representative of individuals living in the community in Canada and exclude individuals in residential or group-based settings; estimates do not represent the true population prevalence. Conclusion This analysis is the first in more than 10 years to provide a prevalence estimate and description of wheelchair and scooter users in Canada. Since 2004, there has been an increase in the proportion of the population who use wheelchairs and scooters, likely related to an aging Canadian population. These new prevalence data have potential to inform policy, research, and clinical practice.
Maximum Power Point Tracking: A PSPICE Circuit Simulator Approach

As the photovoltaic source exhibits non-linear v-i characteristics, which are dependent on solar insolation and environmental factors, development of an accurate circuit - oriented model is essential to simulate and design the photovoltaic integrated system. In this paper a simple photovoltaic source PSPICE circuit-oriented models are developed useful for integrated PV system design. These include modeling of solar array, maximum power point algorithm, and converter modules. The solar array module takes care of cell temperature variation, solar insolation and incident angle, while the maximum power point tracking module adjusts the operating point. This module is integrated with a dc-dc converter to extract maximum power from the photovoltaic array under all operating conditions. For verification a SEPIC converter supplied photovoltaic system is considered in this paper. The developed model is validated with experimental results. In all the cases the developed models are working without any convergence problems.
Zur Arbeitsteilung zwischen Regionen: Das nordöstliche Brandenburg aus der Sicht der regionalökonomischen Theorie

Die wirtschaftliche Entwicklung in den neuen Landern ist im Begriff, sich immer mehr auszudifferenzieren. Standorte, die im Windschatten der Wachstumsknoten liegen, haben dabei das Nachsehen. Der Nordosten Brandenburgs ist einer dieser Standorte. Um zu einer Arbeitsteilung mit den benachbarten Regionen zu finden, muss die Region zunachst ihre komparativen Vorteile definieren und sich entsprechend spezialisieren. Der vorliegende Beitrag untersucht die Entwicklungsperspektiven fur das nordostliche Brandenburg aus dem Blickwinkel der regionalokonomischen Theorie.
A MMSE estimator in mel-cepstral domain for robust large vocabulary automatic speech recognition using uncertainty propagation

Uncertainty propagation techniques achieve a more robust automatic speech recognition by modeling the information missing after speech enhancement in the short-time Fourier transform (STFT) domain in probabilistic form. This information is then propagated into the feature domain where recognition takes place and combined with observation uncertainty techniques like uncertainty decoding. In this paper we show how uncertainty propagation can also be used to yield minimum mean square error (MMSE) estimates of the clean speech directly in the recognition domain. We develop a MMSE estimator for the Mel-cepstral features by propagation of the Wiener ﬁlter posterior distribution and show how it outperforms conventional MMSE methods in the STFT domain on the AU-RORA4 large vocabulary test environment.
Gene products required for surface expression of the capsular form of the group 1 K antigen in Escherichia coli (O9a:K30)

The group 1 K30 antigen from Escherichia coli (O9a:K30) is present on the cell surface as both a capsular structure composed of high‐molecular‐weight K30 polysaccharide and as short K30 oligosaccharides linked to lipid A‐core in a lipopolysaccharide molecule (K30LPS). To determine the molecular processes that are responsible for the two forms of K antigen, the 16 kb chromosomal cps region has been characterized. This region encodes 12 gene products required for the synthesis, polymerization and translocation of the K30 antigen. The gene products include four glycosyltransferases responsible for synthesis of the K30 repeat unit; a PST(1) exporter (Wzx), required to transfer lipid‐linked K30 units across the plasma membrane to the periplasmic space; and a K30‐antigen polymerase (Wzy). These gene products are typical of those seen in O‐antigen biosynthesis gene clusters and they interact with the lipopolysaccharide translocation pathway to express K30LPS on the cell surface. The same gene products also provide the biosynthetic intermediates for the capsule assembly pathway, although they are not in themselves sufficient for synthesis of the K30 capsule. Three additional genes, wza, wzb and wzc, encode homologues to proteins that are encoded by gene clusters involved in expression of a variety of bacterial exopolysaccharides. Mutant analysis indicates that Wza and Wzc are required for wild‐type surface expression of the capsular structure but are not essential for polymerization and play no role in the translocation of K30LPS. These surface expression components provide the key feature that distinguishes the assembly systems for O antigens and capsules.
In vivo reduction of erythrocyte oxidant stress in a murine model of beta-thalassemia.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES Oxidant damage is an important contributor to the premature destruction of erythrocytes and anemia in thalassemias. To assess the extent of oxidant damage of circulating erythrocytes and the effects of antioxidant therapy on erythrocyte characteristics and anemia, we used a mouse model of human beta-thalassemia intermedia (b1/b2 deletion). DESIGN AND METHODS Several parameters indicative of oxidant damage were measured at baseline and following administration of the semi-synthetic flavonoid antioxidant, 7-monohydroxyethylrutoside (monoHER), to beta-thalassemic mice at a dose of either 500 mg/kg i.p. once a day (n=6) or 250 mg/kg i.p. twice a day (n=6) for 21 days. RESULTS Significant erythrocyte oxidant damage at baseline was indicated by: (i) dehydration, reduced cell K content, and up-regulated K-Cl co-transport; (ii) marked membrane externalization of phosphatidylserine; (iii) reduced plasma and membrane content of vitamin E; and (iv) increased membrane bound IgG. MonoHER treatment increased erythrocyte K content, and markedly improved all cellular indicators of oxidant stress and of lipid membrane peroxidation. While anemia did not improve, monoHER therapy reduced reticulocyte counts, improved survival of a fraction of red cells, and reduced ineffective erythropoiesis with decreased total bilirubin, lactate dehydrogenase and plasma iron. INTERPRETATION AND CONCLUSIONS Antioxidant therapy reverses several indicators of oxidant damage in vivo. These promising antioxidant effects of monoHER should be investigated further.
Analysis of Radially Restored Images for Spherical Single Lens Cellphone Camera

A spherical single lens imaging system for cellphone camera is proposed in this research. The overall thickness from the front surface of the lens to the image sensor is approximately 4.5 mm, which is competitive compared to 6~7 mm of current cellphone camera modules that use compound lens system. One defect of this spherical single lens that deteriorates image quality is radially variant blur, which is produced by one of the optical aberrations called field curvature. We describe a novel method of blur restoration that employs polar image and polar Point Spread Function (PSF) converted from Cartesian image and Cartesian PSF. The blurred image was radially segmented into several regions, to which polar PSFs at different field angles were applied. Results of visual and quantitative evaluation indicate that number of segmented regions and weighted average of β/ n ratios, i.e., ratio of bandwidth to the number Circulant Blocks (CBs) of the polar PSF Block-Toeplitz-with-Circulant-Blocks (BTCB) matrices affect the restored image quality and Mean Square Error (MSE). Evaluation results on restored images using different polar image resolutions revealed that high resolution obtains good pixel continuity, whereas low resolution results in radially expanding pixel vacancies.
A novel unequal error protection (UEP) scheme using D-STTD for multicast service

To significantly enhance the spectral efficiency of the MBS service, UEP and MIMO are important core technologies to realize such challenging goal. Taking into account of the implementation constraints, 4 times 2 is widely accepted as a reasonable MIMO setup and is a mandatory configuration of the next generation wireless systems. Within the 4 times 2 MIMO configuration, D-STTD is an important transmission scheme which strikes a balance between spatial diversity and spatial multiplexing and it can achieve better performance than VBLAST. Traditional approaches focus on different ways to introduce UEP in single antenna systems. However, it is difficult to apply the conventional schemes in the D-STTD systems since the decoding error is mainly contributed by the spatial interference between different streams. In this paper, we shall propose a novel UEP scheme for MBS services using D-STTD in 4times2 MIMO systems and formulate a general design framework to determine various parameters of the proposed UEP scheme. For illustration, we give two examples on the determination of the UEP parameters for the uncoded UEP design and the coded UEP design. From the results, we found that the proposed UEP scheme can achieve significant MBS system performance gain compared to those baseline systems.
The transmission of AIDS: the case of the infected cell.

CURRENT approaches to preventing infection with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) have focused on the retrovirus itself. However, biologic and epidemiologic studies of HIV and the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) indicate that more emphasis should be placed on the virus-infected cell. Several groups of researchers 1-10 have demonstrated the presence of HIV in many different hematopoietic cells, including T and B lymphocytes and macrophages, as See also p 3023. well as in cells (macrophages and endothelial and glial cells) of the brain. These infected cells can survive and serve as reservoirs (factories) for continual virus production and spread. When found in body fluids, they can transfer the infection to other individuals. T-helper lymphocytes generally die after HIV infection, 1-4 but some can replicate HIV to high titer in culture without undergoing cell death. 11 Thus, they too could serve as a source of virus transmission. In studies from our laboratory,
Die Institutionen der Lohnregulierung: Funktion und Wandel im internationalen Vergleich

Dieser Aufsatz untersucht die Dynamik institutionellen Wandels am Beispiel der Lohnregulierung und testet dabei die Konvergenz- gegen die Pfadabhangigkeitsthese. Dies setzt einerseits die Analyse der Anpassungs- und Homogenisierungszwange, die die Internationalisierung der Markte generiert, und andererseits der Funktions- bzw. Problemlosungsfahigkeit alternativer institutioneller Arrangements im Verhaltnis zu diesen Anpassungszwangen voraus. Konvergenz der Institutionen im Landervergleich ist daher nur unter der Bedingung zu erwarten, dass sich ein direkter, signifikanter Effekt der Internationalisierung auf die Entwicklung der Institutionen, sowie ein "single best way" der Anpassung an die Internationalisierungszwange nachweisen lasst. Das Ergebnis zum Zentralisierungsgrad der Lohnsatzung ist in jeder Hinsicht negativ. Alle Befunde stutzen die These von der der Pfadabhangigkeit institutionellen Wandels. Die Zentralisation der Lohnregelung wird einerseits durch deren institutionelle Rahmenbedingungen, andererseits durch selbstreferenzielle Anpassung signifikant beeinflusst. Die Lohnregelung ist den Anpassungserfordernissen der wirtschaftlichen Internationalisierung in hohem Mase ausgesetzt. Dies unterstreicht nicht zuletzt der Umstand, dass die komparativen Lohnkosten als zentrales Kriterium internationaler Wettbewerbsfahigkeit gelten. Dementsprechend waren konvergente Anpassungsprozesse in der Zentralisation der Lohnregelung in ausgepragter Weise als in anderen gesellschaftlichen Bereichen zu erwarten. Deshalb lasst der negative Befund zur Konvergenzhypothese fur die Zentralisation der Lohnregelung den Schluss zu, dass auch bei fortschreitender wirtschaftlicher Internationalisierung pfadabhangige Anpassungsprozesse generell starker als Konvergenzprozesse den institutionellen Wandet in der Gesellschaft pragen.
Ethnomedicinal plants of district Kathua (J&K)

Ethno-medicinal research in district Kathua was conducted during the period 2010 to 2012. The objective of the research was the assessment and preservation of cultural and traditional knowledge of medicinal plants of the area. A checklist of the ethno -medicinal flora has been produced which includes 139 species belonging to 117 genera and 69 families. Information on the medicinal uses gathered from the locals together with their botanical identity is presented in the study.