Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Global Analysis of Genes Regulated by EvgA of the Two-Component Regulatory System in Escherichia coli

ABSTRACT The response regulator EvgA controls expression of multiple genes conferring antibiotic resistance in Escherichia coli (K. Nishino and A. Yamaguchi, J. Bacteriol. 184:2319-2323, 2002). To understand the whole picture of EvgA regulation, DNA macroarray analysis of the effect of EvgA overproduction was performed. EvgA activated genes related to acid resistance, osmotic adaptation, and drug resistance.
EfaR Is a Major Regulator of Enterococcus faecalis Manganese Transporters and Influences Processes Involved in Host Colonization and Infection

ABSTRACT Metal ions, in particular manganese, are important modulators of bacterial pathogenicity. However, little is known about the role of manganese-dependent proteins in the nosocomial pathogen Enterococcus faecalis, a major cause of bacterial endocarditis. The present study demonstrates that the DtxR/MntR family metalloregulator EfaR of E. faecalis controls the expression of several of its regulon members in a manganese-dependent way. We also show that efaR inactivation impairs the ability of E. faecalis to form biofilms, to survive inside macrophages, and to tolerate oxidative stress. Our results reveal that EfaR is an important modulator of E. faecalis virulence and link manganese homeostasis to enterococcal pathogenicity.
Changes in serological biomarkers of liver function and connective tissue turnover in chronic hepatitis B during lamivudine therapy

Abstract Assessment of hepatic damage associated with chronic hepatitis B (CHB) currently relies on measurement of serum transaminases and assessment of hepatic histology. It was determined serum hepatic function tests and the liver fibrosis biomarkers type IV collagen (CIV), amino-terminal propeptide of type I procollagen (PINP), amino-terminal propeptide of type III procollagen (PIIINP) and carboxy-terminal telopeptide of type I collagen (ICTP) were of value in monitoring the effect of lamivudine therapy for CHB. Thirty-nine patients received orally 100 mg lamivudine daily for 48 weeks. Blood samples were obtained at baseline, 24 and 48 weeks. At the end of the treatment period, the patients were then divided into four groups according to the pattern of HBs and HBe antigens. At baseline, alanine aminotransferase, aspartate aminotransferase, PIIINP and the PINP/ICTP ratio and at 24 weeks alanine aminotransferase, aspartate aminotransferase and the PINP/ICTP ratio had lower values in the complete response compared with complete failure groups. Using receiver-operated curve analysis, only the PINP/ICTP ratio at baseline (area under the curve 0.806) and ALT and the PINP/ICTP ratio at 24 weeks (areas under the curve 0.803 and 0.776, respectively) had significant diagnostic ability in detecting responders. In conclusion, the PINP/ITCP ratio is sensitive and specific in detecting responders to treatment.
Surveillance of Zoonotic Infectious Disease Transmitted by Small Companion Animals

The One Health paradigm for global health recognizes that most new human infectious diseases will emerge from animal reservoirs. Little consideration has been given to the known and potential zoonotic infectious diseases of small companion animals. Cats and dogs closely share the domestic environment with humans and have the potential to act as sources and sentinels of a wide spectrum of zoonotic infections. This report highlights the lack of a coordinated global surveillance scheme that monitors disease in these species and makes a case for the necessity of developing a strategy to implement such surveillance.
Secular rhythms and Halberg's paraseasonality in the time occurrence of cerebral stroke.

OBJECTIVES To obtain the optimal information concerning the time course of the morbidity od cerebral stroke. BACKGROUND Recently, long years' cycling, similar to that in sun and geomagnetic activity, is observed in various biomedical variables. Other discovery is that of transyear (over one year) and cisyear (under one year) rhythms,originating also in the sun, in medicine. SUBJECTS There were 6100 patients with cerebral infarction, 415 with intracerebral and 277 with subarachnoid hemorrhage admitted at Clinic of Neurology in Nové Zámky (area with 70 km radius and 180 000 inhabitants). Their monthly numbers were registered since January 1989 up to December 2004. METHODS The data were processed by Halberg's cosinor regression. Presence of linear trend and of the period lengths of 10.5 (solar Schwabe-cycle), 5.25, 7.04 (geomagnetic activity cycling), 3.52, 1.70, 1.50, 1.30 (solar wind cycling), 1.20, 1.00 and 0.50 years was tested. Level of statistical significance was set at alpha = 0.05. RESULTS In all three time series, significant linear trends were found with the estimated monthly increase by 0.8% of the estimated starting mesor value for infarction, 1.2% for cerebral and 1.9% for subarachnoid hemorrhage. Both the solar and geomagnetic cycling with their second harmonics were significant in all three clinical diagnoses. The transyear with period length of 1.3 year was significant in both hemorrhages while in infarction only its borderline significance was achieved. Nevertheless, its amplitude was always higher (by 15 to 83%) than that of 1.00 year estimated cosinusoid. CONCLUSION All presented time series document increasing trends in the morbidity on cerebral stroke in the given geographic area. The presence of secular, years lasting cycles adds to relatively long list of similar chronocosmoepidemiologic analyses, so far generally ignored due to insufficient understanding of inferential statistics and chronobiology among doctors. The transyear paraseasonality represents a new element in these studies. To honour the nestor of the world chronobiology, who highly acknowledged the work of Ladislav Dérer, the designation "Halberg's paraseasonality" is proposed (Tab. 2, Fig. 3, Ref. 17).
The glia/neuron index in the submolecular layers of the motor cortex in the cat

It has been shown in recent quantitative histological studies on the cerebral cortex (Hawkins and Olszewski, '57) that the glia index (number of glia divided by number of neurons) in the whale is significantly higher than in man. The authors interpreted these findings as indicating that the glia index is correlated with brain weight rather than the position of a given species in the phylogenetic scale as previously suggested by Friede ( '54). If the glia index actually reflects only brain weight rather than phylogenetic development, one might expect the index to increase directly as brain weight increases in ontogenetic development. On the other hand, if the increase in the index does not coincide with the increase in brain weight throughout ontogenetic development, factors other than brain weiglit alone may be suspected to influence the glia index. It is the purpose of the present investigation to study the glia index in a series of cats ranging from kittens to adults in order to determine what relationships exist between the index and brain weight in growing and maturing animals.
Risperidone is Effective for Wandering and Disturbed Sleep/Wake Patterns in Alzheimer’s Disease

Behavioral and psychological symptoms of dementia (BPSD), especially aggressiveness, wandering, and sleep disturbance, are a major burden for caregivers. Daily sleep/wake patterns and wandering of institutionalized patients with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) were visually monitored, and 34 patients who manifested wandering were selected and randomly classified into 2 groups: the risperidone group and the nonrisperidone group. After an administration of low-dose risperidone for the risperidone group, the BPSD were reassessed. The binding potentials of dopamine D2 receptor for preadministration and postadministration of risperidone were assessed using positron emission tomography (PET) for 1 case. After the use of risperidone, aggressiveness and wandering were reduced and the nighttime sleeping hours were increased. The PET revealed that the binding potential of dopamine receptor was increased after administration of the drug, associated with improved sleep/wake patterns and behavioral abnormality. Possible serotonergic modulation of dopaminergic function might explain the neurobiological basis of the effect of risperidone.
HKT 1 Mediates Sodium Uniport in Roots . Pitfalls in the Expression of HKT 1 in Yeast 1

The function of HKT1 in roots is controversial. We tackled this controversy by studying Na uptake in barley (Hordeum vulgare) roots, cloning the HvHKT1 gene, and expressing the HvHKT1 cDNA in yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) cells. High-affinity Na uptake was not detected in plants growing at high K but appeared soon after exposing the plants to a K-free medium. It was a uniport, insensitive to external K at the beginning of K starvation and inhibitable by K several hours later. The expression of HvHKT1 in yeast was Na (or K) uniport, Na-K symport, or a mix of both, depending on the construct from which the transporter was expressed. The Na uniport function was insensitive to external K and mimicked the Na uptake carried out by the roots at the beginning of K starvation. The K uniport function only took place in yeast cells that were completely K starved and disappeared when internal K increased, which makes it unlikely that HvHKT1 mediates K uptake in roots. Mutation of the first in-frame AUG codon of HvHKT1 to CUC changed the uniport function into symport. The expression of the symport from either mutants or constructs keeping the first in-frame AUG took place only in K-starved cells, while the uniport was expressed in all conditions. We discuss here that the symport occurs only in heterologous expression. It is most likely related to the K inhibitable Na uptake process of roots that heterologous systems fail to reproduce.
Efficient experience reuse in non-Markovian environments

Learning time is always a critical issue in Reinforcement Learning, especially when Recurrent Neural Networks are used to predict Q values in non-Markovian environments. Experience reuse has been received much attention due to its ability to reduce learning time. In this paper, we propose a new method to efficiently reuse experience. Our method generates new episodes from recorded episodes using an action-pair merger. Recorded episodes and new episodes are replayed after each learning epoch. We compare our method with standard online learning, and learning using experience replay in a vision based robot problem. The results show the potential of this approach.
Temporal Reasoning about Two Concurrent Sequences of Events

This paper discusses temporal reasoning with respect to constraints on two concurrent sequences of events. If two given sequences of events can be mapped into one sequence that satisfies a given constraint, then the constraint is said to be consistent. First, we mention that the consistency of such constraints is NP-complete. Then we introduce the notion of graph representations of constraints. If a graph representation of a given constraint c can be constructed in polynomial time, then the consistency of c is decidable in polynomial time. However, it is shown that the graph representability of a given c is coNP-complete. Next, we propose a subclass CDC$^{\neq} of constraints such that for each constraint c in CDC$^{\neq}$, a graph representation of c can be constructed in polynomial time. The expressive power of CDC$^{\neq}$ is incomparable to any other subclasses of constraints for which the consistency problem is known to be tractable.
Ju l 2 01 7 Projected Shadowing-based Data Assimilation

In this article we develop algorithms for data assimilation based upon a computational time dependent stable/unstable splitting. Our particular method is based upon shadowing refinement and synchronization techniques and is motivated by work on Assimilation in the Unstable Subspace (AUS) [10, 53, 41] and Pseudo-orbit Data Assimilation (PDA) [32, 31, 24]. The algorithm utilizes time dependent projections onto the non-stable subspace determined by employing computational techniques for Lyapunov exponents/vectors. The method is extended to parameter estimation without changing the problem dynamics and we address techniques for adapting the method when (as is commonly the case) observations are not available in the full model state space. We use a combination of analysis and numerical experiments (with the Lorenz 63 and Lorenz 96 models) to illustrate the efficacy of the techniques and show that the results compare favorably with other variational techniques.
Modeling of CCFL using lamp delay and stability analysis of backlight inverter for large size LCD TV

Cold cathode fluorescent lamps (CCFL) for LCD TVs have a special v-i characteristic, which can make the backlight inverter system unstable. In this paper, modeling of both the cold cathode fluorescent lamp and the backlight inverter is performed in terms of incremental impedance in the frequency domain. The stability analysis of the backlight inverter and the CCFL is presented using the derived models. It is concluded that the time delay, after which the lamp voltage responds to the lamp current change, contributes to the incremental impedance of the CCFL at the high frequency region, which may cause instability of the backlight inverter. The time delay is considered as a lamp characteristic. The effect of the inverter design parameters on the stability is also investigated. The lamp model and the stability analysis results are verified from experiments with a backlight inverter for 32-inch LCD TVs.
The impact of a physician-directed health information technology system on diabetes outcomes in primary care: a pre- and post-implementation study.

PURPOSE To determine the impact of a physician-directed, multifaceted health information technology (HIT) system on diabetes outcomes. METHODS A pre/post-interventional study. SETTING AND PARTICIPANTS The setting was Providence Primary Care Research Network in Oregon, with approximately 71 physicians caring for 117 369 patients in 13 clinic locations. The study covered Network patients with diabetes age 18 years and older. INTERVENTION The study intervention included implementation of the CareManager HIT system which augments an electronic medical record (EMR) by automating physician driven quality improvement interventions, including point-of-care decision support and care reminders, diabetes registry with care prompts, performance feedback with benchmarking and access to published evidence and patient educational materials. MEASURES The primary clinical measures included the change in mean value for low density lipoprotein (LDL) target <100 mg/dL or 2.6 mmol/l, blood pressure (BP) target <130/80 mmHg and glycated haemoglobin (HbA1c) target <7%, and the proportion of patients meeting guideline-recommended targets for those measures. All measures were analysed using closed and open cohort approaches. RESULTS A total of 6072 patients were identified at baseline, 70% of whom were continuously enrolled during the 24-month study. Significant improvements were observed in all diabetes related outcomes except mean HbA1c. LDL goal attainment improved from 32% to 56% (P=0.002), while mean LDL decreased by 13 mg/dL (0.33 mmol/l, P=0.002). BP goal attainment increased significantly from 30% to 52%, with significant decreases in both mean systolic and diastolic BP. The proportion of patients with an HbA1c below 7% was higher at the end of the study (P=0.008). Mean patient satisfaction remained high, with no significant difference between baseline and follow-up. Total Relative Value Units per patient per year significantly increased as a result of an increase in the number of visits in year one and the coding complexity throughout. CONCLUSION Implementation of a physician-directed, multifaceted HIT system in primary care was associated with significantly improved diabetes process and outcome measures.
The International Prostate Symptom Score in a community-based sample of men between 55 and 74 years of age: prevalence and correlation of symptoms with age, prostate volume, flow rate and residual urine volume.

OBJECTIVES To study the prevalence of symptoms of prostatism in the community and the correlation between these symptoms and age, prostate volume, flow rate and residual urine volume. SUBJECTS AND METHODS The International Prostate Symptom Score (IPSS) was administered to a community-based population of 502 men aged between 55 and 74 years with no prostate cancer and no history of a prostate operation. Prostate volume parameters, flow rate variables and post-void residual urine volume were measured. RESULTS Overall, 6 and 24% of the men were severely and moderately symptomatic, respectively. The results of a detailed questionnaire such as the IPSS (only 12% of the men scored 0) contrast with the men's global perception of their voiding function (82% claimed to have 'no voiding complaints'). A good correlation was found between the total symptom score and the single disease-specific quality of life question that is included in the IPSS (r = 0.74, P = 0.001). There was a weak correlation between the IPSS and total prostate volume (r = 0.19, P < 0.001), and between the IPSS and physiological measures such as peak flow rate (r = -0.18, P < 0.001) and post-void residual urine volume (r = 0.25, P < 0.001). There was a very weak correlation between the IPSS and age (r = 0.09, P = 0.04). CONCLUSIONS The parameters used to characterize benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH) should be considered independently because no predictions about the value of a certain parameter can be made by knowing one of the other parameter values. Symptom scores should therefore not be used as a pre-selection criterion in the determination of the prevalence of clinical BPH without taking other measures into account. The interpretation of the parameter values in a clinical setting should take the lack of correlation and the variability of the parameter values into account.
Isolation and characterization of a human p53 cDNA clone: expression of the human p53 gene.

A cDNA clone for human p53 cellular tumor antigen has been isolated and characterized. This clone contains the complete 3′‐untranslated region and most of the open reading frame for the protein. Nucleotide sequence analysis revealed that p53 mRNA contains an Alu repeat in the 3′‐untranslated region. Hybridization selection experiments showed this clone was capable of selectively binding p53 mRNA. In vitro translation of SV80 mRNA resulted in the synthesis of two immunoreactive p53 polypeptide species. Northern blot analysis showed that human p53 mRNA was 2.8 kb in length and was present in cell lines containing high and low levels of p53 protein. There appears to be only a single p53 gene in human cells and Southern blot analysis demonstrated no major genomic rearrangements or amplification of the p53 gene in the transformed cell lines examined.
Pairwise Key Agreement Protocols Based on the Weil Pairing

To achieve security in the networks, it is important to be able to encrypt and authenticate messages sent between the users. Keys for encryption and authentication purposes must be agreed upon by the users in the networks. Three new pairwise key agreement protocols based on Weil pairing are proposed in this paper. In those protocols, all the users share common secret information. They may arrange the pairwise key and authenticate each other by fewer messages. The proposed protocols have the security attributes such as known session key security, perfect forward secrecy, no key-compromise impersonation, no unknown key-share and no key control.
Benzedrine and dexedrine in the treatment of children's behavior disorders.

The effect of benzedrine® (dl-amphetamine) and dexedrine® (d-amphetamine) sulfates upon the behavior of maladjusted children was studied in the somewhat controlled setting of a children's psychiatric hospital. Twelve years' experience with these drugs is reported involving observations upon 275 children who received benzedrine®, 113 who received dexedrine® and 82 who received both preparations. The most frequent optimal daily dose was 20 mg. of benzedrine® and 10 mg. of dexedrine®. Specific behavior responses to both drugs approximated one another both in quality and frequency, with 50 to 60% of the children becoming more subdued, 15 to 25% showing no change, 20% showing increased activity and 5% showing an acceleration of school progress only. Clinically these reactions indicated 60 to 75% symptomatic improvement, 15 to 25% no change and 10 to 15% unfavorable responses. Children with a variety of clinical diagnoses were benefited with no evidence of tolerance or addiction following prolonged administration. Occasional undesirable physiologic side effects were noted with both preparations, most frequently during the first few days of treatment only. Approximately equal numbers of children responded more favorably to one drug in contrast to the other. In general benzedrine® was found to produce the more dramatic results, except with individual children in whom its side effects were more pronounced, in which cases dexedrine® proved more advantageous. The conclusion is drawn that these drugs influence children's behavior by altering their emotional reactions to distressing situations. Both offer the practitioner readily available and easily controlled pharmacologic approaches to the symptomatic treatment of children's behavior disorders.
Walking activity measured by accelerometry during respiratory rehabilitation.

PURPOSE Activity monitoring is considered a highly relevant outcome measure of respiratory rehabilitation. This study aimed to assess the usefulness of a new accelerometric method for characterization of walking activity during a 3-week inpatient rehabilitation program. METHODS After individual calibration of the accelerometer at different walking speeds, whole-day physical activity was recorded for 15 patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease on the first and the last days of the program, and for 10 healthy subjects. Data were expressed as percentage of time spent in inactivity, low level activity, and medium level activity, with the latter corresponding to usual walking speed. RESULTS The patients spent more time being inactive and less time walking than healthy subjects. At the end of the rehabilitation program, medium level activity had increased from 4% to 7% of total recording time. However, the change was not significant after periods of imposed exercise training were excluded. Walking activity increased to a greater degree among the patients with preserved limb muscle strength at entry to the program. Although health status scores improved, the changes did not correlate with the changes in walking activity. CONCLUSION The findings lead to the conclusion that this new accelerometric method provides detailed analysis of walking activity during respiratory rehabilitation and may represent an additional useful measure of outcome.