Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Phenotypic and Genotypic Analysis of Enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli in Samples Obtained from Egyptian Children Presenting to Referral Hospitals

ABSTRACT Hospital surveillance was established in the Nile River Delta to increase the understanding of the epidemiology of diarrheal disease among Egyptian children. Between September 2000 and August 2003, samples obtained from children less than 5 years of age who had diarrhea and who were seeking hospital care were cultured for enteric bacteria. Colonies from each culture with a morphology typical of that of Escherichia coli were tested for the heat-labile (LT) and heat-stable (ST) toxins by a GM-1-specific enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay and colonization factor (CF) antigens by an immunodot blot assay. Enterotoxigenic E. coli (ETEC) isolates were recovered from 320/1,540 (20.7%) children, and ETEC isolates expressing a known CF were identified in 151/320 (47%) samples. ST CFA/I, ST CS6, ST CS14, and LT and ST CS5 plus CS6 represented 75% of the CFs expressed by ETEC isolates expressing a detectable CF. Year-to-year variability in the proportion of ETEC isolates that expressed a detectable CF was observed (e.g., the proportion that expressed CFA/I ranged from 10% in year 1 to 21% in year 3); however, the relative proportions of ETEC isolates expressing a CF were similar over the reporting period. The proportion of CF-positive ETEC isolates was higher among isolates that expressed ST. ETEC isolates expressing CS6 were isolated significantly less often (P < 0.001) than isolates expressing CFA/I in children less than 1 year of age. Macrorestriction profiling of CFA/I-expressing ETEC isolates by using the restriction enzyme XbaI and pulsed-field gel electrophoresis demonstrated a wide genetic diversity among the isolates that did not directly correlate with the virulence of the pathogen. The genome plasticity demonstrated in the ETEC isolates collected in this work suggests an additional challenge to the development of a globally effective vaccine for ETEC.
A 2+1-level stochastic understanding model

In this paper, an extension of the 2-level stochastic understanding system is presented. An additional stochastic level is introduced in the system as the attribute value normalization module. In order to improve the model trainability, the conceptual decoding and value normalization steps are decoupled, leading to a 2+1-level system. The proposed approach is evaluated on the French MEDIA task (tourist information and hotel booking). This new 10k-utterance corpus is segmentally annotated allowing for a direct training of the 2-level conceptual models. Further developments of the system (modality propagation and hierarchical recomposition) are also investigated. On the whole, the proposed improvements achieve a 24% relative reduction of the understanding error rate from 37.6% to 28.8%
Maternal carbohydrate intake and pregnancy outcome

Experimental evidence indicates that the primary maternal environmental factor that regulates feto–placental growth is substrate delivery to the placental site, which is the product of maternal substrate levels and the rate of placental-bed blood flow. Thus, maternal factors which change either substrate level or flow alter feto–placental growth rate. The best-studied substrate in human pregnancy is glucose, and there is a direct relationship between maternal blood glucose levels and size at birth. Altering the type of carbohydrate eaten (high- v. low-glycaemic sources) changes postprandial glucose and insulin responses in both pregnant and non-pregnant women, and a consistent change in the type of carbohydrate eaten during pregnancy influences both the rate of feto–placental growth and maternal weight gain. Eating primarily high-glycaemic carbohydrate results in feto–placental overgrowth and excessive maternal weight gain, while intake of low-glycaemic carbohydrate produces infants with birth weights between the 25th and the 50th percentile and normal maternal weight gain. The calculated difference in energy retention with similar total energy intakes is of the order of 80 000 kJ. Preliminary information from subsequent metabolic studies indicates that the mechanisms involved include changes in: daily digestible energy requirements (i.e. metabolic efficiency), substrate utilization (glucose oxidation v. lipid oxidation), and insulin resistance and sensitivity. Thus, altering the source of maternal dietary carbohydrate may prove to be a valuable tool in the management of pregnancies at risk for anomalous feto–placental growth and for the prevention and/or treatment of obesity and insulin resistance in the non-pregnant state.
MSAMSum: Towards Benchmarking Multi-lingual Dialogue Summarization

Dialogue summarization helps users capture salient information from various types of dialogues has received much attention recently. However, current works mainly focus on English dialogue summarization, leaving other languages less well explored. Therefore, we present a multi-lingual dialogue summarization dataset, namely MSAMSum, which covers dialogue-summary pairs in six languages. Specifically, we derive MSAMSum from the standard SAMSum using sophisticated translation techniques and further employ two methods to ensure the integral translation quality and summary factual consistency. Given the proposed MSAMum, we systematically set up five multi-lingual settings for this task, including a novel mix-lingual dialogue summarization setting. To illustrate the utility of our dataset, we benchmark various experiments with pre-trained models under different settings and report results in both supervised and zero-shot manners. We also discuss some future works towards this task to motivate future researches.
A member of the melanoma antigen‐encoding gene (MAGE) family is expressed in human skin during wound healing

MAGE‐1 has been identified as a human gene, which directs the expression of an antigen being recognized on melanoma cells by autologous cytolytic T cells. MAGE‐1 is expressed in melanomas and some other tumors. It has been proposed that this gene may be linked to the transformation event and therefore might serve as an approach to precisely targeted immunotherapy. Prior to such an approach, extensive testing of normal human tissue is necessary to establish the tumor‐specific nature of MAGE‐1 expression. Similar to events that occur during neoplastic tumor growth and spreading, wound healing involves a complex interrelationship between various cell types which migrate, proliferate and differentiate. Therefore, we investigated the expression of MAGE‐1 in skin during wound repair. We could detect MAGE‐1 mRNA by RT‐PCR followed by specific hybridization as well as by Northern blotting in human skin from the 1st to the 7th day after wounding. Comparison of the expression of MAGE mRNA with that of β‐actin mRNA showed that it is expressed in amounts equal to about and at least one‐fifth that of β‐actin. Our data strongly suggest that MAGE mRNA expression is not necessarily linked to neoplastic transformation, but rather represents the function of a cellular gene which is activated during inflammation or early tissue repair.
A hydrodynamic topographic map in the midbrain of goldfish Carassius auratus

SUMMARY Sensory systems often consist of several parallel pathways. Within each pathway, sensory information may be processed in topographically arranged maps or in maps derived by neuronal computation. Parallel pathways have so far not been described in the central lateral line system of teleost fish at levels higher than the medulla, and evidence for midbrain lateral line maps in fish is still weak. We found two classes of units with different response patterns in the central lateral line nucleus in the torus semicircularis of the goldfish Carassius auratus. Units of one class responded to a passing sphere and to the wake caused by that sphere with excitation. Units of the second class also responded to the moving sphere. However, these units did not respond to the wake behind the sphere. Hydrodynamic information received by class two units was topographically organized in the torus semicircularis of goldfish in that anterior body areas projected to rostral midbrain and posterior body areas to caudal midbrain. Units that responded only to the passing sphere were on average located more ventrally in the lateral TS than the units that responded exclusively to a vibrating sphere.
Body composition prediction equations for elderly men.

BACKGROUND The purpose of this study was to develop and validate anthropometric body composition prediction equations for elderly (i.e., > or =65 years old) men. This was necessary because of a lack of accurate and reliable predictive equations specifically developed for this population. METHODS Seventy-five elderly men were randomly assigned to either an equation development sample (on = 50) or an equation validation sample (n = 25). Subject anthropometric measures were analyzed in a regression procedure with hydrodensitometry-determined body density, percentage of fat, fat-free mass, and fat weight to develop prediction equations for each body composition variable. The equation estimates were then validated against the hydrostatically determined measures. RESULTS Four equations were developed and validated for the estimation of elderly male body composition variables [one each for body density (R2 = .66, SEE = +/- .01, where SEE is the standard error of estimate), percentage of fat (R2 = .66, SEE = +/- 4.43), fat-free mass (R2 = .88, SEE = +/- 3.94, and fat weight (R2 = .90, SEE = +/- 4.11)]. The equations provided estimates of body density, percentage of fat, fat-free mass, and fat weight, which were not statistically different from the hydrostatically determined criterion variables. CONCLUSIONS The results of this study indicate that accurate and reliable anthropometric predictive equations can be developed for an active and healthy elderly male population. These equations may be used for accurate epidemiological testing of this group's body composition variables.
Early changes of pulmonary mechanics to predict the severity of bronchopulmonary dysplasia in ventilated preterm infants

Objectives: To verify whether early pulmonary mechanics measurements are useful to predict subsequent bronchopulmonary dysplasia (BPD) and its severity. Methods: Pulmonary mechanics were studied at 3, 5, 7 and 10 days of age in 52 preterm infants with birth weight < 1250 g, affected by respiratory distress syndrome and ventilated for more than 72 h. Pulmonary function was assessed using a previously standardized method based on the measurement of airflow with a Fleisch OO pneumotachograph and airway pressure with a model P7D differential pressure transducer. At 28 days pulmonary outcome was classified into three groups: no BPD, mild BPD (oxygen dependency and hazy lung on X-ray) and severe BPD (oxygen dependency and Northway stage 3/4). Results: Of the 52 infants, 39 survived to 28 days: no BPD (11 infants), mild BPD (16 infants) and severe BPD (12 infants). The no-BPD group had significantly higher gestational age and birth weight, fewer males and a lower incidence of patent ductus arteriosus than both BPD groups, while no differences were detected between the BPD groups. Lung compliance was significantly higher in the mild-BPD group than in the severe-BPD group at 7 and 10 days of life (p < 0.01 and p < 0.001, respectively). The corresponding odds ratio confirmed that ventilated infants with lower lung compliance values had a significantly higher probability of developing severe BPD. Respiratory system resistance did not show any predictive value. Conclusions: Our findings indicate that low lung compliance values determined on the 7th and 10th days of life are a reliable predictive tool of the severity of later BPD.
Psoriatic arthritis: current concepts on pathogenesis-oriented therapeutic options.

Psoriatic arthritis (PsA) is a chronic inflammatory arthropathy of the peripheral joints, spine, and entheses, associated with psoriasis and characterized by diverse phenotypic subtypes and a variable clinical course. Much progress has been made in identifying the distinctive characteristics of this disease since Alibert first described the association between psoriasis and arthritis in 1818 in “Lepre squammeuse,” his discourse on skin diseases (1). Recent insights into the immunopathogenic mechanisms of PsA have revealed disease characteristics in the synovium, vascular structures, entheses, and bone of PsA patients that are similar to, and distinct from, those of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) as well as other forms of spondylarthritis (SpA), including ankylosing spondylitis (AS), reactive arthritis, and enteropathic arthritis. Such investigations, along with advances in biotechnology and the development of a number of targeted biologic response modifiers (BRMs) with demonstrated effectiveness for both skin and joint manifestations, have led to substantial progress in the treatment of PsA and a renewed interest in the mechanistic processes behind this complex disease. As with RA and SpA, a subset of patients with PsA fail to respond to conventional therapies and to anti–tumor necrosis factor (anti-TNF) agents that are currently approved for the treatment of PsA. A number of novel agents beyond TNF blockade are under investigation for PsA, underscoring the diverse mechanisms likely to be at play in these heterogeneous phenotypic subtypes of PsA.
Permethrin resistance in the head louse Pediculus capitis from Israel

Head lice, Pediculus capitis, were collected from children aged 3–12 years in Maale Adumin, a town near Jerusalem, after reports of control failure with the pyrethroid insecticide permethrin. A total of 1516 children were examined: living lice and eggs were found on 12.1% of the children; or another 22.8% of the children only nits were found. Twice as many girls as boys (8.1% v 4%) were infested with lice and or nits. Head lice collected from infested children were exposed to permethrin impregnated filter‐papers. Log time probit mortality (ltp) regression lines were calculated for mortality data and compared to ltp lines for a similar collection of head lice made in 1989. The regression lines for the two years were significantly different, with a 4‐fold decrease in susceptibility at the LT50 level between 1989 and 1994. The slopes of the lines also suggested that the 1994 population was more heterogenous in its response to permethrin than the 1989 population. In contrast, a laboratory population of body lice (Pediculus humanus) tested with the same batch of permethrin‐impregnated papers showed a slight but non‐significant increase in susceptibility between 1989 and 1994. The results suggest that resistance to pyrethroids has developed rapidly among head lice since permethrin was introduced in 1991 as a pediculicide in Israel.
Sequence Analysis and Molecular Characterization of the Lactococcus lactis Temperate Bacteriophage BK5-T

ABSTRACT The Lactococcus lactis temperate bacteriophage BK5-T is one of twelve type phages that define L. lactis phage species. This paper describes the nucleotide sequence and analysis of a 21-kbp region of the BK5-T genome and completes the nucleotide sequence of the genome of this phage. The 40,003-nucleotide linear genome encodes 63 open reading frames. Sequence runoff experiments showed that the cohesive ends of the BK5-T genome contained a 12-bp 3′ single-stranded overhang with the sequence 5′-CACACACATAGG-3′. Two major BK5-T structural proteins, of approximately 30 and 20 kDa, were identified, and N-terminal sequence analysis determined that they were encoded by orf7 and orf12, respectively. A 169-bp fragment containing a 37-bp direct repeat and several smaller repeat sequences conferred resistance to BK5-T infection when introduced in trans to the host cell and is likely a part of the BK5-T origin of replication (ori).
Implementation scenario of phase array antennas with beam-scan functionality for RFID applications

This paper presents the implementation of multi-beam antenna for the effective coverage of RFID in the near-zone. The 2-D planar antenna array may radiate focused energy along the vertical dimension while in the meantime providing multiple focused spots along the horizontal dimensions for multiple coverages or switching the coverage in terms of time-sharing. Two systems have been implemented and presented in this paper to demonstrate their characteristics.
Making skeletal muscle from progenitor and stem cells: development versus regeneration

For locomotion, vertebrate animals use the force generated by contractile skeletal muscles. These muscles form an actin/myosin‐based biomachinery that is attached to skeletal elements to affect body movement and maintain posture. The mechanics, physiology, and homeostasis of skeletal muscles in normal and disease states are of significant clinical interest. How muscles originate from progenitors during embryogenesis has attracted considerable attention from developmental biologists. How skeletal muscles regenerate and repair themselves after injury by the use of stem cells is an important process to maintain muscle homeostasis throughout lifetime. In recent years, much progress has been made toward uncovering the origins of myogenic progenitors and stem cells as well as the regulation of these cells during development and regeneration. WIREs Dev Biol 2012, 1:315–327. doi: 10.1002/wdev.30
An Overview of the Intrathymic Intricacies of T Cell Development

The generation of a functional and diverse repertoire of T cells occurs in the thymus from precursors arriving from the bone marrow. In this article, we introduce the various stages of mouse thymocyte development and highlight recent work using various in vivo, and, where appropriate, in vitro models of T cell development that led to discoveries in the regulation afforded by transcription factors and receptor–ligand signaling pathways in specifying, maintaining, and promoting the T cell lineage and the production of T cells. This review also discusses the role of the thymic microenvironment in providing a niche for the successful development of T cells. In particular, we focus on advances in Notch signaling and developments in Notch ligand interactions in this process.
Radiotherapy as an effective treatment modality for follicular lymphoma: a single institution experience

Purpose Follicular lymphoma (FL) is an indolent non-Hodgkin's lymphoma that is highly sensitive to radiotherapy (RT). However, the effectiveness of RT has not been well established. We reviewed our experiences to assess the role of RT for FL and analyze treatment results. Materials and Methods Retrospective analysis was done on 29 patients who received first RT between January 2003 and August 2013. Of 23 early stage (stage I, II) patients, 16 received RT alone, four received chemotherapy followed by RT, two received RT postoperatively, and one received salvage RT for relapse after resection. Six advanced-stage (stage III, IV) patients received RT after chemotherapy: two received consolidation RT, three received salvage RT for residual lesions, and one received RT for progressive sites. Median RT dose was 30.6 Gy (range, 21.6 to 48.6 Gy). Median follow-up duration was 62 months (range, 6 to 141 months). Results All patients showed complete response in the radiation field. Eight outfield relapses were reported. Seven patients received salvage treatment (three chemotherapy, four RT). Four patients showed excellent responses, especially to RT. Estimated 5-year and 10-year relapse-free survivals were 72% and 60%. In the RT-alone group, 5-year relapse-free survival was 74.5%. All advanced-stage patients were disease-free with 100% 5-year overall survival. Disease-specific death was noted in only one patient; four others died of other unrelated causes. No significant toxicity was reported. Conclusion RT resulted in excellent treatment outcomes for all FL stages when used as a primary treatment modality for early stage or salvage-treatment modality for advanced-stage disease.
Percepción de las competencias TIC en los estudiantes de nuevo ingreso en la Universidad de Lleida

En este estudio se pretende conocer la percepcion que tienen losestudiantes universitarios de nuevo ingreso sobre sus competencias en las Tecnologiasde la Informacion y la Comunicacion (TIC) en la Universidad de Lleida (UdL). Losdatos se recogen a traves de un cuestionario y se analizan cuantitativa ycualitativamente. Los resultados revelan que la competencia mejor valorada es eltratamiento de la informacion escrita y la competencia con un nivel mas bajo es la detratamiento de datos.
Enhanced Representation with Contrastive Loss for Long-Tail Query Classification in e-commerce

Query classification is a fundamental task in an e-commerce search engine, which assigns one or multiple predefined product categories in response to each search query. Taking click-through logs as training data in deep learning methods is a common and effective approach for query classification. However, the frequency distribution of queries typically has long-tail property, which means that there are few logs for most of the queries. The lack of reliable user feedback information results in worse performance of long-tail queries compared with frequent queries. To solve the above problem, we propose a novel method that leverages an auxiliary module to enhance the representations of long-tail queries by taking advantage of reliable supervised information of variant frequent queries. The long-tail queries are guided by the contrastive loss to obtain category-aligned representations in the auxiliary module, where the variant frequent queries serve as anchors in the representation space. We train our model with real-world click data from AliExpress and conduct evaluation on both offline labeled data and online AB test. The results and further analysis demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed method.
Hybrid CMOS-OxRAM RNG circuits

Compact, low-power random number generators (RNG) are essential for applications such as stochastic, bio-inspired-computing and secure system data encryption/communication. We demonstrate for the first time highly scalable RNG circuits based on the reset-state transient current fluctuation of resistive switching OxRAM devices. We propose- (i) single OxRAM based pseudo-random number generator (PRNG) and (ii) 2-OxRAM based true-random number generator (TRNG) circuits. The proposed hybrid RNG circuits have been validated for 10 nm thick HfOx devices at 180 nm CMOS node. Chi-square test, serial spectral test and covariance/correlation-based analysis are performed to analyze the performance of the proposed hybrid RNG nanocircuits.
Constitutive Expression of GAP-43 Correlates with Rapid, but Not Slow Regrowth of Injured Dorsal Root Axons in the Adult Rat

It has been postulated that the neuronal growth-associated protein GAP-43 plays an essential role in axon elongation. Although termination of developmental axon growth is generally accompanied by a decline in expression of GAP-43, a subpopulation of dorsal root ganglion (DRG) neurons retains constitutive expression of GAP-43 throughout adulthood. Peripheral nerve regeneration occurring subsequent to injury of the peripheral axon branches of adult DRG neurons is accompanied by renewed elevation of GAP-43 expression. Lesions of DRG central axon branches in the dorsal roots are also followed by some regenerative growth, but little or no increase in GAP-43 expression above the constitutive level is observed. To determine whether dorsal root axon regeneration occurs only from neurons which constitutively express GAP-43, we have used retrograde fluorescent labeling to identify those DRG neurons which extend axons beyond a crush lesion of the dorsal root. Only GAP-43 immunoreactive neurons supported axon regrowth of 7 mm or greater within the first week. At later times, axon regrowth is seen to occur from neurons both with and without GAP-43 immunoreactivity. We conclude that regeneration of injured axons within the dorsal root is not absolutely dependent on the presence of GAP-43, but that expression of GAP-43 is correlated with a capacity for rapid growth.