Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Rational design of novel antibacterial vaccines with an emphasis on tuberculosis

Vaccines are available for some, but not all, bacterial pathogens. Accordingly, bacterial pathogens still cause major health problems. Novel insights into the basic immunological mechanisms involved in protection against bacteria will provide guidelines for the design of novel vaccines. In particular, these include broad-acting vaccines composed of protein antigens shared by all members of a given pathogen group but absent in the human host and vaccines which operate via T-cells.
An Extremely Large Mode Area Microstructured Core Leakage Channel Fiber With Low Bending Loss

A technique of mitigating the reduction of mode area in bent large mode area (LMA) fibers by employing higher index rods in one region of the core along with lower index microstructured rods at the opposite region has been presented in this paper. The effective area is further increased by lowering the index difference between the background and some selected rods in the cladding. Apart from this, a very large ratio of higher order mode confinement loss to the fundamental mode confinement loss is achieved to ensure the single modedness. The ingenious techniques have enabled the proposed design to exhibit effective area over 4000 μm 2 allied with very low bending loss at the wavelength of 1.064 μm.
La Crosse virus small genome mRNA is made in the cytoplasm

The cellular site of La Crosse virus S genome mRNA synthesis was examined by pulse-labeling infected cells for various times and determining the amount of labeled S mRNA in both the cytoplasmic and nuclear fractions. With pulse times as short as 3 min, La Crosse virus S genome transcription was found to be localized in the cytoplasm.
Mothers' expressed attitudes: associations with maternal depression and children's self-esteem and psychopathology.

OBJECTIVE Mothers' expressed attitudes about their children were examined to discern whether the associations between maternal depression and children's psychopathology and self-esteem might be modified by the mother's expression of critical attitudes. METHOD Mother-child dyads with mothers who had a history of at least one episode of unipolar major depression during the child's lifetime (N = 20) were compared to dyads with well parents (N = 19). Children's ages ranged from 8 to 10 years. Mothers' attitudes toward their children were derived from semistructured interviews. The affect expressed in each maternal statement was coded as neutral, positive, descriptive negative, or affectively charged negative. RESULTS Affectively charged negative statements were found to be associated with mothers with a history of depressive episodes. A tendency was noted for the highest rates of psychopathology to be among children of depressed mothers who used affective-negative statements. Mothers' use of affectively charged negatives was found to modify the association between maternal depression and children's lower global self-worth. CONCLUSIONS Clinicians attuned to mothers' expression of critical attitudes toward their children might detect children at risk for lowered self-esteem and the development of psychopathology.
Quantifying the influence of small omnivorous fishes on seagrass epiphyte load.

The influence of two cryptic, seagrass-inhabiting omnivorous fishes, the fan-bellied leatherjacket Monacanthus chinensis and the variable sabretoothed blenny Petroscirtes variabilis, on seagrass epiphyte biomass are described. Overall, M. chinensis significantly reduced epiphyte biomass by 35·1% after 18 h in experimental aquaria, whilst P. variabilis showed a non-significant 15·7% reduction. It is concluded that some cryptic omnivorous species play an important role in epiphyte removal in seagrass beds.
Effect of Network Communication Overhead on the Performance of Adaptive Speculative Locking Protocol

The speculative locking (SL) protocol extends the twophase locking (2PL) protocol to allow for parallelism among conflicting transactions. The adaptive speculative locking (ASL) protocol provided further enhancements and outperformed SL protocols under most conditions. Neither of these protocols consider the impact of network latency on the performance of the distributed database systems. We have studied the performance of ASL protocol taking into account the communication overhead. The results indicate that though system load can counter network latency, it can still become a bottleneck in many situations. The impact of latency on performance depends on many factors including the system resources. A flexible discrete event simulator was used as the testbed for this study. Keywords—concurrency control; distributed database systems; speculative locking
NAD(P)H dehydrogenase and its role in the vitamin K (2-methyl-3-phytyl-1,4-naphthaquinone)-dependent carboxylation reaction.

A simple three-step method was established for the purification of NAD(P)H dehydrogenase (quinone) ('DT-diaphorase', EC 1.6.99.2) from rat liver by affinity chromatography with a recovery of above 50%. The final enzyme preparation was purified about 750-fold and was electrophoretically homogeneous. Gel filtration showed that the enzyme had a mol.wt. of about 55 000, and one molecule of FAD was found per 55 000 mol.wt. Sodium dodecyl sulphate/polyacrylamide-gel electrophoresis gave a mol.wt. of about 27 000. Two N-terminal amino acids, asparagine/aspartic acid and glutamine/glutamic acid, were found in about equal yield, suggesting the presence of two non-identical polypeptide chains in the enzyme. NAD(P)H dehydrogenase was selectively removed by this affinity-chromatographic method from a microsomal carboxylation system. The system, which was solubilized by detergent and is dependent on vitamin K (2-methyl-3-phytyl-1,4-naphthaquinone or analogues with other side chains), lost its activity on the removal of the enzyme. The activity can be completely restored to the system by adding purified cytoplasmic NAD(P)H dehydrogenase or by using the quinol form of vitamin K1 (2-methyl-3-phytyl-1,4-naphthaquinol).
Electrical characteristics of SAW filters on SiO2/Al/LiNbO3 structure for inverter multiplex transmission systems

To improve the power durability of interdigital transducer (IDT) electrodes, transversal type of surface acoustic wave (SAW) filters based on a SiO2/Al/LiNbO3 structure were fabricated and their power durability, withstand voltage, and frequency temperature characteristics were measured. We have proposed a gate drive system using the SAW filters for the multilevel invertor. In our system, a transmission energy in the order of 100 mW through the SAW filters is desirable to drive switching devices. Therefore, it is important to improve the power durability of the SAW filters. The frequency temperature characteristic changed from −75.6 ppm/°C to −13.1 ppm/°C, the withstand voltage changed from 1120 V to 1351 V, and a power durability of 2.0 W was obtained by depositing a SiO2 film on the SAW filters with Al electrodes. These results confirmed that the SAW filter based on the SiO2/Al/LiNbO3 structure is suitable for the proposed system.
Association between serum ferritin and the insulin resistance syndrome in a representative population.

OBJECTIVE Unexplained hepatic iron overload with increased serum ferritin (SF) values has been associated with the insulin resistance syndrome (IRS), defined by the presence of one or more of the following criteria: increased body mass index (BMI), diabetes, hyperlipidemia or hypertension. However, as yet the association between IRS and SF in a representative population has not been investigated. METHODS The study subjects participated in a nationwide epidemiological survey on metabolic disorders in the adult German population. The 1200 probands included in this study are representative of the German population. To eliminate major causes of secondary iron overload, 114 (9.5%) subjects with excessive alcohol consumption and 16 (1.5%) subjects with serological evidence for hepatitis B or C were excluded. For all remaining 1070 probands, complete clinical data of SF, HbA1c, known diabetes, BMI, cholesterol, high-density lipoprotein-cholesterol and blood pressure were available. RESULTS SF values were significantly increased in men and women with high BMI (> 25 kg/m2), increased cholesterol (> 200 mg/dl), and increased systolic (> 160 mmHg) blood pressure, in women with diabetes, and in men with increased diastolic (> 95 mmHg) blood pressure. Furthermore, there was a significant correlation between the number of IRS criteria and SF. CONCLUSIONS This study shows a significant correlation between SF and the presence of IRS criteria in a large representative population. Interestingly, the severity of the IRS seems to be associated with increased SF levels suggesting a causal connection. Further studies are required to investigate the pathophysiological mechanism and consequences of increased SF levels in patients with IRS.
Randomised trials in surgery: problems and possible solutions

The quality and quantity of randomised trials of surgical techniques is acknowledged to be limited. According to Peter McCulloch and colleagues, however, some aspects of surgery present special difficulties for randomised trials. In this article they analyse what these difficulties are and propose some solutions for improving the standards of clinical research in surgery.
La cuenta satélite del turismo de España: objetivos, aspectos metodológicos y primeras estimaciones (1996-1999)

En esta nota se resumen los aspectos basicos de la version piloto de la Cuenta Satelite del Turismo de Espana (CSTE), elaborada por la Subdireccion General de Cuentas Nacionales del INE. El trabajo se centra en tres tipos de aspectos: en primer lugar, se senalan las caracteristicas generales del proyecto de elaboracion de la CSTE, asi como sus fases y objetivos; una segunda parte esta dedicada a la descripcion de sus principales ele-mentos conceptuales, a partir de la metodologia internacional de referencia aprobada por Naciones Unidas en febrero de 2000, analizando sus interrelaciones con el esquema conceptual y estadistico de la Contabilidad Nacional de Espana y especialmente con el sistema input-output (origen/destino) que anualmente elabora el INE; por ultimo, se presentan los resultados de las magnitudes del turismo para la economia espanola obteni-dos en esta version piloto de la CSTE.
Multiple-Inputs and Multiple-Outputs Wireless Power Combining and Delivering Systems

In this paper, we investigated the effect of power combining and delivering in multiinput and multioutput wireless energy transmission systems, which consist of more than one transmitter antennas as sources and more than one receiver antennas as loads and repeaters. Theoretical expressions were developed to model the system operation that can be in a large-scale wireless energy network architecture. System characteristics, such as power transfer between antennas, power losses induced in each antenna, wireless efficiency, coil misalignment, and power fluctuation due to the loss of frequency synchronization were examined by theory and verified with experiments. Measurement results matched well with the theory demonstrating the feasibility of combining and delivering power with high efficiencies in large-scale wireless energy transmission systems.
A case of angioneurotic oedema with a high content of non-functioning, double peaked C1 esterase inhibitor.

A high content of non-functioning C1 esterase inhibitor was found in serum and plasma from a patient with angioneurotic oedema. On antigen–antibody crossed electrophoresis the inhibitor appeared with a low peak normally located and a high more rapidly migrating peak in the α1-fraction. No heredity for the disease was known.
ENHANCING MAPREDUCE JOB EXECUTION ON GEODISTRIBUTED DATA ACROSS

In Recent era the size of the data set we need to handle grows rapidly. Efficiently analyzing Big data has always been an issue in our current era. Cloud computing along with the implementations of MapReduce framework provides a parallel processing model and associated implementation to process huge amount of data. In cloud, in many scenarios the input data set are geographically distributed across datacenters. This paper deals with enhancing the MapReduce job execution on the geo distributed data. Possible execution paths are analyzed. A Data Transformation Graph is used to determine the schedules for the job sequences which are optimized using the Shortest Path Algorithm. The proposed model deals with the extending of the Existing Dijkstra’s Algorithm to consider the node weight in addition to the edge weight. Ozzie workflow and mapper side joins are used to reduce the execution time and cost. As shown by the comparisons the execution time of the MapReduce job execution has been enhanced.
DoS and DDoS Attacks: Defense, Detection and Traceback Mechanisms - A Survey

Denial of Service (DoS) or Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks are typically explicit attempts to exhaust victim’s bandwidth or disrupt legitimate users’ access to services. Traditional architecture of internet is vulnerable to DDoS attacks and it provides an opportunity to an attacker to gain access to a large number of compromised computers by exploiting their vulnerabilities to set up attack networks or Botnets. Once attack network or Botnet has been set up, an attacker invokes a large-scale, coordinated attack against one or more targets. Asa result of the continuous evolution of new attacks and ever-increasing range of vulnerable hosts on the internet, many DDoS attack Detection, Prevention and Traceback mechanisms have been proposed, In this paper, we tend to surveyed different types of attacks and techniques of DDoS attacks and their countermeasures. The significance of this paper is that the coverage of many aspects of countering DDoS attacks including detection, defence and mitigation, traceback approaches, open issues and research challenges.
Correlation of oestrogen receptor gene polymorphism with gouty arthritis

Gout represents a group of diseases characterised by hyperuricaemia, arthritis, and uric acid crystal formation. Men have a higher level of serum uric acid and are more susceptible to gout than women. The lower serum urate values in women of reproductive age compared with their male counterparts have been ascribed to lower renal postsecretory uric acid reabsorption.1 An increase in ratios of testosterone to oestradiol has been reported to be associated with hyperuricaemia.2 The oestrogen receptor gene is located at chromosome 6q25.1 and has a thymine–adenine (TA) dinucleotide repeat polymorphism 1174 bp upstream from exon 1. This polymorphism has been shown to be associated with menopausal …
Principal neuron spiking: neither necessary nor sufficient for cerebral blood flow in rat cerebellum

Neuronal activity, cerebral blood flow, and metabolic responses are all strongly coupled, although the mechanisms behind the coupling remain unclear. One of the key questions is whether or not increases in spiking activity in the stimulated neurons are sufficient to drive the activity‐dependent rises in cerebral blood flow (CBF) that form the basis of the signals used in functional neuroimaging such as the blood oxygen level‐dependent (BOLD) signal. To this end the present study examined the effect of enhanced spike activity per se on CBF in rat cerebellar cortex under conditions of disinhibition, achieved by blocking GABAA receptors using either bicuculline or picrotoxin. Purkinje cell spiking activity and local field potentials were recorded by glass microelectrodes, and laser Doppler flowmetry was used to monitor CBF. Disinhibition increased Purkinje cell spiking rate to 200–300% of control without incurring any increase in basal CBF. This demonstrates that increased spike activity per se is not sufficient to affect basal CBF. The neurovascular coupling between excitatory synaptic activity and CBF responses evoked by inferior olive (climbing fibre) stimulation was preserved during disinhibition. Thus, the unchanged basal CBF in the presence of the dramatic rise in Purkinje cell spiking rate was not explained by impaired synaptic activity–CBF coupling. On the basis of our previous and the present studies, we conclude that increased spiking activity of principal neurons is neither sufficient nor necessary to elicit CBF responses and in turn BOLD signals, and that activation‐dependent vascular signals reflect excitatory synaptic activity.
A Vacation-Based Performance Analysis of an Energy-Efficient Motorway Vehicular Communication System

Due to the unprecedented growth in bandwidth requirement, the increasing number of access points (APs) deployed within a macrocell for services such as video conferencing, video gaming, and data off-loading leads to significantly higher energy consumption. This advancement in mobile networks has forced researchers to explore various methods of energy saving, although with little emphasis on motorway vehicular networks where mobility is also an important aspect. Energy saving in these networks is extremely challenging due to the dynamic nature of the environment in which they operate. To analyze such a network, we first develop a performance model for a medium access control (MAC) protocol, namely, the modified version of packet reservation multiple access (M-PRMA) with wireless channel impairments in a motorway vehicular environment. The M-PRMA protocol provides communication links (time slots) between an AP and the vehicles in range. The time slots of the M-PRMA protocol are modeled as servers where each outage of the channel is represented as a server on queue-length-independent vacation. Then, each AP, in a hierarchical micro-macro topology, is modeled as a single-server queue where the AP takes queue-length-dependent vacations (switches to sleep mode) to save energy during its inactivity period, although at the expense of degraded quality of service (QoS). To address this, a number of sleep strategies for the AP are studied. Finally, both of these proposed models (M-PRMA with channel impairments and AP with sleep cycles) are analyzed and verified through simulations. The performance results reveal that the introduction of sleep strategies at an AP can save up to 80% transmission energy during off-peak hours and 66% on average during the day in a motorway vehicular environment while supporting end-to-end QoS for video and audio conferencing applications.
Efficacy, tolerability, and pharmacodynamics of apremilast in recalcitrant plaque psoriasis: a phase II open-label study.

BACKGROUND Apremilast, a small molecule specific inhibitor of phosphodiesterase 4, works intracellularly to modulate pro-inflammatory and anti-inflammatory mediators. This phase II, multicenter, open-label study evaluated the efficacy, tolerability, and pharmacodynamics of apremilast in patients with recalcitrant plaque psoriasis. METHODS This multicenter, open-label study comprised four phases: pre-treatment (≤35 days), treatment (12 weeks), extension (12 weeks), and observational follow-up (4 weeks). Patients with recalcitrant plaque psoriasis received apremilast 20 mg BID for 12 weeks. Responders (≥75% improvement in Psoriasis Area and Severity Index [PASI-75]) continued treatment and non-responders (< PASI-75) were titrated to apremilast 30 mg BID through week 24. Efficacy assessments included change in static Physician's Global Assessment, PASI, and body surface area, and proportion of patients achieving PASI-50, PASI-75, and PASI-90. Other assessments included adverse events, lesional skin biopsies to assess changes in epidermal thickness, and immunohistochemistry to assess changes in peripheral blood subsets. RESULTS A total of 30 patients were enrolled. At week 12, 67% of patients had a ≥1-point improvement in static Physician's Global Assessment, meeting treatment effect criterion. Mean percent decreases (improvements) from baseline were -59% for PASI score and -53% for body surface area. Most adverse events were mild. Median reduction in epidermal thickness was 34% at week 12 (P=0.083); five patients showed absence of keratin 16. Significant reductions in CD11c, CD3, and CD56 indicate that apremilast reduced myeloid dendritic cell, T-cell, and NK-cell or NK-T-cell infiltration into the epidermis and dermis. Reduced inflammatory leukocytes, with a pattern of broad, partial inhibition, suggested reduced IL-23/Th17 and Th22 response pathways. CONCLUSIONS These results confirm apremilast's biological and clinical activity and support ongoing studies in psoriasis. Clinicaltrials.gov Identifier: NCT00521339.
Evolutionary Link between the Mycobacterial Plasmid pAL5000 Replication Protein RepB and the Extracytoplasmic Function Family of σ Factors

ABSTRACT Mycobacterial plasmid pAL5000 represents a family of plasmids found mostly in the Actinobacteria. It replicates using two plasmid-encoded proteins, RepA and RepB. While BLAST searches indicate that RepA is a replicase family protein, the evolutionary connection of RepB cannot be established, as no significant homologous partner (E < 10−3) outside the RepB family can be identified. To obtain insight into the structure-function and evolutionary connections of RepB, an investigation was undertaken using homology modeling, phylogenetic, and mutational analysis methods. The results indicate that although they are synthesized from the same operon, the phylogenetic affinities of RepA and RepB differ. Thus, the operon may have evolved through random breaking and joining events. Homology modeling predicted the presence of a three-helical helix-turn-helix domain characteristic of region 4 of extracytoplasmic function (ECF) σ factors in the C-terminal region of RepB. At the N-terminal region, there is a helical stretch, which may be distantly related to region 3 of σ factors. Mutational analysis identified two arginines indispensable for RepB activity, one each located within the C- and N-terminal conserved regions. Apart from analyzing the domain organization of the protein, the significance of the presence of a highly conserved A/T-rich element within the RepB binding site was investigated. Mutational analysis revealed that although this motif does not bind RepB, its integrity is important for efficient DNA-protein interactions and replication to occur. The present investigation unravels the possibility that RepB-like proteins and their binding sites represent ancient DNA-protein interaction modules.
Assessing Adoption of Online PAN Card Registration System (OPCRS): An Indian e-Government System Perspective

The purpose of this study is to explore factors influencing adoption of Online PAN (Permanent Account Number) Card Registration System (OPCRS) with point of view of potential adopters in context of India. The study aimed to develop the research model and validate the influence of self-efficacy and social influence on perceived usefulness and attitude, the effect of perceived usefulness, self-efficacy, and attitude on behavioral intentions. The proposed research model was empirically tested by collecting usable data from 377 potential adopters of the OPCRS system in context of India. The study analysed results using structural equation modeling (SEM) technique using AMOS 20.0 and found all seven hypotheses using five constructs as significant. Also, the goodness-of-fit indices for the proposed model exceeded their respective standard levels of acceptance establishing the relative adequacy of the model.