Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Database of Mandarin Neighborhood Statistics

In the design of controlled experiments with language stimuli, researchers from psycholinguistic, neurolinguistic, and related fields, require language resources that isolate variables known to affect language processing. This article describes a freely available database that provides word level statistics for words and nonwords of Mandarin, Chinese. The featured lexical statistics include subtitle corpus frequency, phonological neighborhood density, neighborhood frequency, and homophone density. The accompanying word descriptors include pinyin, ascii phonetic transcription (sampa), lexical tone, syllable structure, dominant PoS, and syllable, segment and pinyin lengths for each phonological word. It is designed for researchers particularly concerned with language processing of isolated words and made to accommodate multiple existing hypotheses concerning the structure of the Mandarin syllable. The database is divided into multiple files according to the desired search criteria: 1) the syllable segmentation schema used to calculate density measures, and 2) whether the search is for words or nonwords. The database is open to the research community at https://github.com/karlneergaard/Mandarin-Neighborhood-Statistics.
Purification of a nocardicin A-sensitive LD-carboxypeptidase from Escherichia coli by affinity chromatography

An LD-carboxypeptidase releasing the terminal D-Ala from UDP-MurNAc-L-Ala-D-Glu-m-A2pm-D-Ala (UDP-MurNAc-tetrapeptide) was purified from Escherichia coli to biochemical homogeneity and characterized biochemically. Final purification was achieved by nocardicin A-Sepharose affinity chromatography. An apparent molecular weight of 32,000 was determined by sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis for the enzyme, which seems to be a monomeric protein as indicated by gel filtration. The optimum pH of the enzyme was 8.4, and the pI was 5.5. The Km for UDP-MurNAc-tetrapeptide was 1.5 x 10(-4) M, and the Vmax was 0.4 nmol/min. Nocardicin A inhibited the enzyme competitively, with a Ki of 5 x 10(-5) M. Benzylpenicillin, cephalosporin C, thienamycin, and D-alanyl-D-alanine did not affect the enzyme activity. Possible functions of the enzyme for growth and division of the murein sacculus are discussed.
Improved engraftment of human cord blood stem cells in NOD/LtSz-scid/scid mice after irradiation or multiple-day injections into unirradiated recipients.

Human lymphoematopoietic stem cells engraft in irradiated immunodeficient mice that are homozygous for the severe combined immunodeficiency (scid) mutation. Engraftment levels in C.B-17-scid/scid mice, however, have been low and transient, decreasing the utility of this model for investigation of the development potential and function of human stem cells. In the present study, we have used NOD/LtSz-scid/scid mice as recipients and human cord blood as a source of donor stem cells. Our results demonstrate that NOD/LtSz-scid/scid mice support approximately fivefold higher levels of human stem cell marrow engraftment than do C.B-17-scid/scid mice. Human CD34+ cells are present in the marrow of recipient mice, and the engrafted cells readily peripheralize to the circulation of the host. Terminal differentiation of the stem and progenitor cells into mature progeny is limited. Using a multiple-day injection protocol developed in mice, which allows engraftment of stem cells between congenic mice in the absence of irradiation preconditioning, we observed high levels of human cell engraftment in unirradiated NOD/LtSz-scid/scid recipients after three or five consecutive-day injections. These results demonstrate that NOD/LtSz-scid/scid mice support high levels of human stem cell engraftment and that xenogeneic lymphohematopoietic stem cells can engraft in unirradiated hosts without the need for ablative reconditioning. This model will be useful for the in vivo investigation of human stem cells and for the preclinical analysis of human stem cells for transplantation.
Knowledge of and attitudes toward heel prick screening for sickle cell disease in Saint Lucia

ABSTRACT Objectives. In the Caribbean country of Saint Lucia, umbilical-cord-blood screening for sickle cell disease (SCD) was the testing method that health care workers (HCWs) on the maternity wards of the hospitals preferred until the new heel prick (HP) testing method was introduced in the country in 2014. This SCD study sought to assess HCWs’ knowledge of and attitude toward HP screening and also determine new mothers’ favorability toward HP screening. Methods. A total of 70 HCWs and 132 new mothers answered survey questionnaires in three hospitals. In addition, four focus group discussions were held, two with HCWs and two with the mothers. Results. Among the HCWs interviewed, 85.7% of them had knowledge of the HP test. However, only 25.7% had attended training sessions on the procedure. Among the HCWs, 64.3% of them felt the HP test should be mandatory, 27.1% said it should not be mandatory, and 8.6% did not know if it should be mandatory. In their focus groups, the HCWs said they believed the mothers would accept the HP method. For their part, 22.0% of the mothers said they had heard about the HP test, and 63.6% reported knowing the reason why the baby would be tested. Further, 83.3% indicated that the test would be beneficial for the baby. In addition, 88.6% of the mothers said that more information on the HP test was needed. In their focus group discussions, the mothers said they were generally not concerned about the pain the heel prick method might cause the baby. Conclusions. The HCWs’ knowledge of the HP screening method was high. The mothers trust HCWs, and the mothers would accept the HP procedure irrespective of their knowledge of the test and any discomfort associated with this screening method.
Molecular cloning and immunogenicity of renal cell carcinoma‐associated antigen G250

The molecular cloning of the cDNA and gene encoding the renal cell carcinoma (RCC)‐associated protein G250 is described. This protein is one of the best markers for clear cell RCC: all clear‐cell RCC express this protein, whereas no expression can be detected in normal kidney and most other normal tissue. Antibody studies have indicated that this molecule might serve as a therapeutic target. In view of the induction/up‐regulation of G250 antigen in RCC, its restricted tissue expression and its possible role in therapy, we set out to molecularly define the G250 antigen, which we identified as a transmembrane protein identical to the tumor‐associated antigen MN/CAIX. We determined, by FISH analysis, that the G250/MN/CAIX gene is located on chromosome 9p12‐13. In view of the relative immunogenicity of RCC, we investigated whether the G250 antigen can be recognized by TIL derived from RCC patients. The initial characterization of 18 different TIL cultures suggests that anti‐G250 reactivity is rare. Int. J. Cancer 85:865–870, 2000. © 2000 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
The 2012 West Nile encephalitis epidemic in Dallas, Texas.

IMPORTANCE After progressive declines over recent years, in 2012 West Nile virus epidemics resurged nationwide, with the greatest number of cases centered in Dallas County, Texas. OBJECTIVE To analyze the epidemiologic, meteorologic, and geospatial features of the 2012 Dallas West Nile virus epidemic to guide future prevention efforts. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PATIENTS Public health surveillance of Dallas County, an area of 2257 km2 and population of 2.4 million. Surveillance data included numbers of residents diagnosed with West Nile virus infection between May 30, 2012, and December 3, 2012; mosquito trap results; weather data; and syndromic surveillance from area emergency departments. MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURES Incidence and age-adjusted incidence rates of West Nile neuroinvasive disease (WNND), daily prevalence of emergency department visits for asthma and skin rash, and Culex quinquefasciatus species-specific vector index (an estimate of the average number of West Nile virus-infected mosquitoes per trap-night). RESULTS The investigation identified 173 cases of WNND, 225 of West Nile fever, 17 West Nile virus-positive blood donors, and 19 deaths in 2012. The incidence rate for WNND was 7.30 per 100,000 residents in 2012, compared with 2.91 per 100,000 in 2006, the largest previous Dallas County outbreak. An unusually rapid and early escalation of large numbers of human cases closely followed increasing infection trends in mosquitoes. The Cx quinquefasciatus species-specific vector index predicted the onset of symptoms among WNND cases 1 to 2 weeks later (count regression β = 2.97 [95% CI, 2.34 to 3.60]; P < .001). Although initially widely distributed, WNND cases soon clustered in neighborhoods with high housing density in the north central area of the county, reflecting higher vector indices and following geospatial patterns of West Nile virus in prior years. During the 11 years since West Nile virus was first identified in Dallas, the log-transformed annual prevalence of WNND was inversely associated with the number of days with low temperatures below 28°F (-2.2°C) in December through February (β = -0.29 [95% CI, -0.36 to -0.21]; P < .001). Aerial insecticide spraying was not associated with increases in emergency department visits for respiratory symptoms (β = -4.03 [95% CI, -13.76 to 5.70]; P = .42) or skin rash (β = -1.00 [95% CI, -6.92 to 4.92]; P = .74). CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE Large West Nile virus epidemics in Dallas County begin early after unusually warm winters, revisit similar geographical distributions, and are strongly predicted by the mosquito vector index. Consideration of weather patterns and historical geographical hot spots and acting on the vector index may help prevent West Nile virus-associated illness.
Improving safety and performance testing for EV batteries

Alfons Westgeest and Lois Brett will present on the mutual activities of EUROBAT - the Association of European Automotive and Industrial Battery Manufacturers - and the European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC) to improve the standardization framework for safety and performance testing for Hybrid Electric Vehicle (HEV) and Electric Vehicle (EV) batteries. EUROBAT and the JRC began formal cooperation in 2012 to support the JRC Institute for Energy and Transport's (IET) battery energy storage testing for safe electric transport (BESTEST) activity. The BESTEST programme was initiated after the JRC-IET signed a letter of intent for closer cooperation with the US Department of Energy (DoE) on EVs and SmartGrids during a meeting of the EU-US Transatlantic Economic Community (TEC) in 2011. It contributes to the TEC's overarching objective to remove regulatory and standardization barriers between both countries, which could otherwise impede the broad commercialization of (H)EVs. JRC-IET's BESTEST activity will provide impartial and balanced scientific evidence to ensure that European standardisation supports legislation and policies on clean transport. BESTEST's role in the transatlantic letter of intent is to accelerate the electrification of transport by contributing to the development of harmonised testing methodologies and global standards specifically related to EV batteries. Through these activities BESTEST will ultimately facilitate technology development and innovation thereby enhancing the global competitiveness of European industry.
The Influence of Social Presence, Social Exchange and Feedback Features on SNS Continuous Use: The Facebook Context

Social network sites SNS are venues for information sharing that provide a variety of communication features capable of stirring emotions, attitudes and beliefs. This paper highlights the role of SNS feedback features and the meanings they communicate to their users, as design elements capable of enhancing the SNS experience. Based on the theories of Social Presence and Social Exchange, the study suggests and empirically validates a research model where Feedback, Perceived Social Presence, Attitude, Enjoyment and Perceived Usefulness are hypothesized to explain intentions to continue to use an SNS. The results of an online survey of 262 Facebook users found that feedback features were central SNS components that influenced perceptions of social presence and enjoyment, which in turn, along with attitude and perceived usefulness, influenced intentions to continue using Facebook, explaining 55% of its variance. The theoretical and practical implications of these results are discussed.
Integrating Electronic Systems for Requesting Clinical Laboratory Test into Digital Clinical Records: Design and Implementation

Clinical laboratory tests are basic elements that support healthcare tasks such as disease detection, diagnosis and monitoring of response to treatments. Current laboratory information systems focus on the patient database, tests and results, with multiple modules available, connecting with the various analytical systems or work areas. However laboratory information systems functioned as “islands of information”, because their design was fundamentally inward-looking and disconnected from other healthcare computer applications. Actually, the Electronic Health Register (EHR) is considered by clinicians as a tool with great potential healthcare benefits. The EHR, in the sense of a unique and complete record of a patient’s healthcare and state of health, regardless of the healthcare level used, is a real attempt to eliminate these “islands of information” and need modules to act as “bridges” with the laboratory information systems. This type of module, which in generic terms may be referred to as a laboratory test request module, has become an essential feature of the EHR. These modules need to use a laboratory coding system as a common language for exchanging information, ensuring that tests and results are unequivocally identified. The development of the laboratory test request module requires the commitment of professionals and political authorities, being necessary time for their design and an adequate pilot phase. The laboratory professionals have to assume a leadership role in the whole process of design, development and implementation of these modules, integrating in the equipment of information technologies of healthcare providers. In our manuscript we review the elements that may prove electronic systems for requesting clinical laboratory test into digital clinical records and the key elements to move from theory to practice.
Analysis and simulation of gear shift for an AMT based on 2-DOF EMA

Automated Manual Transmission (AMT) technology is concerned widely in the filed of automatic transmission. However, shifting quality, in particular the gap of power interruption is one of the key issues that have not been solved. To some extent, AMT equipped with two degree of freedom electromagnetic Actuator (2-DOF EMA) will reduce the time of power interruption and improve the shift quality. The investigation presents a method of theoretical analysis and constructs the model for the process of gear shift. The structure, working principle and performance of 2-DOF EMA are also introduced. Finally, the simulation results based on MATLAB/Simulink show that the shift time can be controlled in 250ms. Therefore, the shift quality will be improved greatly and AMT equipped with 2-DOF EMA will hold a well prospect in the future.
Effect of air supplement on the performance of continuous ethanol fermentation system

For the purpose of improving ethanol productivity, the effect of air supplement on the performance of continuous ethanol fermentation system was studied. The effect of oxygen supplement on yeast concentration, cell yield, cell viability, extracellular ethanol concentration, ethanol yield, maintenance coefficient, specific rates of glucose assimilation, ethanol production, and ethanol productivity have been evaluated, using a high alcohol tolerant Saccharomyces cerevisiae STV89 strain and employing a continuous fermentor equipped with an accurate air metering system in the flow rate range 0–11 mL air/L/h. It was found that, when a small amount of oxygen up to about 80μ mol oxygen/L/h was supplied, the ethanol productivity was significantly enhanced as compared to the productivity of the culture without any air supplement. It was also found that the oxygen supplement improved cell viability considerably as well as the ethanol tolerance level of yeast. As the air supply rate was increased, from 0 to 11 mL air/L/h while maintaining a constant dilution rate at about 0.06 h−1, the cell concentration increased from 2.3 to 8.2 g/L and the ethanol productivity increased from 1.7 to 4.1 g ethanol/L/h, although the specific ethanol production rate decreased slightly from 0.75 to 0.5 g ethanol/g cell/h. The ethanol yield was slightly improved also with an increase in air supply rate, from about 0.37 to 0.45 ethanol/g glucose. The maintenance coefficient increased by only a small amount with the air supplement. This kind of air supplement technique may very well prove to be of practical importance to a development of a highly productive ethanol fermentation process system especially as a combined system with a high density cell culture technique.
The case against ankle taping

considerably. If taping is really so valuable an injury preventive, should not the star be taped last? In addition to its ineffectiveness, ankle taping takes emphasis away from conditioning of muscles to prevent ankle sprains. Only the muscle and its tendon attached to the bones can, by contraction, prevent excessive motion FIGURE I biibtahii joiiit cu ts tis ti &dquo;wfetv B’all c, mlrw ing i’alg«% or v«rn5 sti aiii
The transplantation of nuclei from single cultured cells into enucleate frogs' eggs.

Nuclei from a monolayer of cultured epithelial cells have been transplanted singly to enucleated unfertilized eggs of Xenopus laevis . About three-quarters of the injected eggs failed to cleave or cleaved abortively. Most of the remainder formed partial blastulae. Less than 1% reached postneurula stages of development. Nuclei from first-transfer blastulae were used for serial transplantation. The nuclei of partial blastulae promoted normal or nearly normal development more often than those of complete blastulae. Several clones were obtained which included nearly normal tadpoles with apparently normal muscle, nerve, blood, and other specialized cell types. Three tadpoles commenced feeding and have completed metamorphosis into young frogs. To prove that the donor- and not egg-nucleus participated in the formation of nucleartransplant tadpoles, genetically marked 2- nu and 1- nu diploid nuclei were transplanted to 2- nu eggs; the resulting tadpoles had the nucleolar number characteristic of donor, not egg, nuclei. Chromosome counts and nuclear diameter measurements on the epidermal cells of these tadpoles revealed the presence of diploid mitoses and the absence of haploid nuclei. The behaviour of egg and donor nuclei immediately after nuclear transfer was determined by tracing the early cleavage pattern of individual eggs and by following, autoradiographically, the fate of donor nuclei whose DNA had been previously labelled with 3 H-thymidine. These experiments show that the serial transplantation of nuclei from monolayer cell cultures can lead to sufficiently normal nuclear-transplant embryo development to provide a useful test of the genetic properties of the donor cell line.
Numerical Optimization of Single-Mode InGaAsP Vertical-Cavity Surface-Emitting Lasers

In the present work, we present a new structure of vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL). In this structure, InGaAsP is used as the active region which is sandwiched between GaAs/AlGaAs distributed bragg mirror at the top of structure and GaAs/AlAs distributed bragg mirror at the bottom. This structure is designed to increase the power and decrease threshold current compared to previous results. In this paper, device characteristics such as light power versus electrical current and voltage versus current are simulated upon the different number of the top and bottom DBR mirror pairs.
Design of microstrip square loop stub loaded dual-mode filter

A microstrip square loop stub loaded dual-mode filter with parasitic coupling between source and load is designed and fabricated. Two transmission zeros are obtained separately. One is controllable and inherent in its dual-mode coupling structure, and the other is introduced by the parasitic source/load coupling. The filter operates on 2.4 GHz with a fractional bandwidth (FBW) of 5.25%. It is evaluated by experiment and simulation with good agreement.
Immunologic correlates of protection induced by vaccination

Vaccine design and licensing depend on the choice of protective antigens and the demonstration of their efficacy. Ideally efficacy correlates with some measurement of immune response, although occasionally the correlation is weak and in the case of some vaccines uncertain. This paper attempts to review what is known about correlates of vaccine-induced protection. Although mucosal and cellular immune responses are clearly important to protection by some vaccines, most vaccines licensed today depend for their efficacy on serum antibodies. Particular levels of antibodies can be identified that confer protection most of the time. A condition for the efficacy of antibodies is functionality, i.e. their ability to kill or inactivate pathogens. The immune system is redundant, and the different types of responses to vaccines act synergistically.
Autoimmune Features Are Associated with Chronic Antibiotic-refractory Pouchitis

Background:Chronic antibiotic-refractory pouchitis (CARP) occurs more frequently in patients with ileal pouch–anal anastomosis (IPAA) with concomitant autoimmune disorders. The aim of this study was to assess the overlap between dysregulated immune features in patients with IPAA and their association with CARP. Methods:We identified 150 symptomatic patients with IPAA who met inclusion criteria, including measurement of select autoimmune serology. Demographic and clinical variables were compared between patients with and without CARP. Results:Autoimmune thyroid disease was more frequent among patients with CARP. The frequency of primary sclerosing cholangitis (16.7% versus 5.3%; P = 0.04) and serum positivity for microsomal antibody (25% versus 6.1%, P = 0.003) were significantly greater in patients with CARP compared with non-CARP patients, respectively. Increased tissue infiltration by IgG4-expressing plasma cells was detected in 17 of 31 patients (54.8%) in the CARP group as compared with 10/67 (14.9%) in the non-CARP group (P = 0.0001). Forty-seven percent of patients in the CARP group versus 22.8% in the non-CARP group had at least 2 immune features (P = 0.019). Among patients with IgG4 histology, 87% of patients in the CARP group versus 60% in the non-CARP group had at least 1 immune marker (P = 0.004). On multivariate analysis, microsomal antibody expression (odds ratio, 6.8; 95% confidence interval, 1.3–42.6; P = 0.02) and increased IgG4-expressing plasma cells tissue infiltration (odds ratio, 9.6; 95% confidence interval, 3.2–32.6, P = 0.0001) were risk factors for CARP. Conclusions:There is marked overlap of certain immune markers in patients with pouch dysfunction, especially those with CARP. Microsomal antibody expression and elevated IgG4-positive plasma cell infiltration were independent risk factors for CARP.