Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Francisella tularensis Induces IL-23 Production in Human Monocytes1

Francisella tularensis, the causative agent of tularemia, is phagocytosed by immune cells such as monocytes and macrophages. Instead of being destroyed in the phagolysosome, the bacterium escapes the phagosome and replicates within the host cytosol. Recent studies indicate that phagosomal escape may have a major impact on the nature of the inflammatory cytokine response to infection. To better understand the host cell response to Francisella infection, we exposed human peripheral blood monocytes to Francisella novicida and analyzed transcriptional changes using high-density oligonucleotide microarrays. Results showed a nearly 300-fold up-regulation of transcripts for the p19 subunit of IL-23, and a nearly 18-fold up-regulation for the p40 subunit of IL-12. IL-23 is formed by the heterodimerization of p19 and p40, and is an important cytokine of the innate immune response. Up-regulation of p19 and p40 was confirmed at the protein level by Western blotting and ELISA analyses, and was found to be largely dependent on PI3K and NF-κB activity. Studies using medium from infected monocytes with or without a p19 blocking Ab showed that the secreted IL-23 induced IFN-γ production from NK cells, suggesting a potential biologically important role for IL-23 in host defense. Finally, infection of human monocytes by the highly virulent Francisella SCHU S4 strain likewise led to IL-23 production, suggesting that the IL-23 response may be relevant during tularemia.
Using Appreciative Inquiry as a Tool to Instigate Transformational Change in Recruiting and Developing Women Faculty in STEM Disciplines

The intent of Cal Poly Pomona's (CPP) NSF ADVANCE program is to create a university-wide system of recruitment and career development that will enable women faculty in STEM disciplines to be successful and advance into leadership positions. To begin the organizational transformation at CPP, eight Appreciative Inquiry focus groups were held with tenure-track and tenured faculty in the Colleges of Science and Engineering, with the goal of ascertaining current strengths in recruitment and career development efforts for new STEM female faculty at CPP. Findings revealed an array of recruitment strategies utilized to solicit good applicant pools, and career development practices that have assisted female faculty during the tenure and promotion process. Focus group participants also designed useful actions for further improvement of the recruiting and career development efforts for women STEM faculty at CPP. Out of the focus group findings, a variety of best practices for recruiting and developing women faculty in STEM disciplines are suggested.
The path space of a directed graph

We construct a locally compact Hausdorff topology on the path space of a directed graph $E$, and identify its boundary-path space $\partial E$ as the spectrum of a commutative $C^*$-subalgebra $D_E$ of $C^*(E)$. We then show that $\partial E$ is homeomorphic to a subset of the infinite-path space of any desingularisation $F$ of $E$. Drinen and Tomforde showed that we can realise $C^*(E)$ as a full corner of $C^*(F)$, and we deduce that $D_E$ is isomorphic to a corner of $D_F$. Lastly, we show that this isomorphism implements the homeomorphism between the boundary-path spaces.
Pruebas de cointegracion de paridad de poder de compra

Se utilizan tres pruebas de una ecuacion de cointegracion, bien conocidas, para probar la paridad del poder de compra (PPC) en los datos actualizados de Taylor (2002). Los resultados son un poco diferentes en los tres metodos. El procedimiento de dos pasos de Engle y Granger muestra fuerte apoyo en favor de PPC, mientras la evidencia favorable es mas debil en los modelos de correccion de errores y de rezagos distribuidos autorregresivos.
Breakthroughs in Photonics 2014: Optical Physical-Layer Network Coding, Recent Developments, and Challenges

Network coding is a revolutionary technique that can enhance network throughput and protection. This paper introduces optical physical-layer network coding (OPNC) and the recent development of OPNC, with focused discussion on “common-channel” OPNC that can efficiently utilize network resources. It also describes the challenges ahead of OPNC, including incorporating more than two signals for OPNC; circumventing the higher signal processing complexity when higher order modulations are adopted; and exploiting OPNC in more sophisticated multichannel systems.
Symbolic speaker adaptation with phone inventory expansion

This paper further develops a previously proposed adaptation method for speech recognition called symbolic speaker adaptation (SSA). The basic idea of SSA is to model a speaker's pronunciation as a blend of speech varieties (SVs) - regional dialects and foreign accents - for which the system has existing pronunciation models. The system determines during an adaptation process the relative applicability of those models, yielding a speech variety profile (SVP) for each speaker. Speaker-dependent lexica for recognition are determined from a speaker's SVP. In this paper, we discuss a series of experiments designed to analyze how the SSA method is affected by SV-balanced training, expanded phone inventories, reduced amounts of adaptation data, and speech from SVs not modeled by the system. The most dramatic improvements were obtained by using expanded ("SV-inclusive") phone inventories. SSA was also shown to be effective with a very small number of adaptation sentences. And, SSA's SV blending scheme yields higher accuracy than using a SV classification scheme for speakers of novel (unseen) SVs.
Molecular method for typing Mycobacterium ulcerans

A cluster of Mycobacterium ulcerans infections has recently occurred on Phillip Island, Victoria, Australia. Previous cases of infection have generally been located around Bairnsdale in southeast Gippsland. The aim of this study was to determine the epidemiological relationship between these strains and other strains originating in Australia and Africa. The previously described plasmid pTBN12 was used as a probe with restriction enzyme-digested chromosomal DNA to differentiate the strains of M. ulcerans. The probe was able to distinguish 11 restriction fragment length polymorphisms (RFLPs). Forty-three strains originating in Victoria were divided into three types, i.e., V1, V2, and V3. The majority of strains (40) yielded a type V1 pattern, including strains from southeast Gippsland. Fourteen strains from Queensland yielded three additional RFLP types, i.e., Q1, Q2, and Q3. Five strains from Benin and seven strains from Zaire yielded five additional RFLP types. It is envisaged that molecular typing of M. ulcerans strains from around the world may have a great impact on understanding of the epidemiology of infection with this organism.
Bioadhesive Controlled Release Systems of Ornidazole for Vaginal Delivery

Our objective was to develop a bioadhesive vaginal tablet formulation of ornidazole by using different polymer mixtures, to evaluate the bioadhesive tablet properties, and to investigate the irritation potential of the formulations to the rat vaginal tissue. Vaginal tablets of ornidazole were directly compressed with bioadhesive and swellable polymer mixtures as release-controlled agents. Carbopol 934 (Cp), pectin (Pc), hydroxypropylmethylcellulose (HPMC), sodium carboxymethylcellulose (Na CMC), and guar gum (GG) were used in different ratios. Bioadhesive properties, swelling capacity, release studies, and histological studies of the formulations were carried out. The bioadhesive strength between bovine vagina and surface of the tablets was determined by tensile experiments, and it was found to be dependent on Cp content. The release mechanism was described and found to be non-Fickian for all formulations. Dissolution data were evaluated statistically. No histological damage was found except one formulation containing high amount of guar gum.
A Data Mining Approach for Standardization of Collectors Names in Herbarium Database

Botanical scientific collections databases are of vital importance for the study of biodiversity. Records maintained in these databases serve several biological research and are evidence of the occurrence of species in nature. Despite the steady increase in the volume of data available in scientific collections of research institutions and their herbaria, data quality is still not ideal and requires considerable effort of researchers in these data cleaning process. This paper presents a methodology to assess, identify suspicious records and for standardization collectors names of specimens. The methodology involves the application of data mining, specifically the association rules analysis, using the Apriori algorithm. The case study performed the database Jabot of Rio de Janeiro Botanic Garden Research Institute.
Evidence for macrophage-mediated protection against lethal Candida albicans infection

Systemic infection of mice with a Candida albicans strain (PCA-2) incapable of yeast-mycelial conversion conferred protection against a subsequent intravenous challenge with the pathogenic strain of the parent organism, strain CA-6. Protection was nonspecific since it was also detected upon challenge of mice with Staphylococcus aureus. Moreover, the PCA-2 organisms had to be viable, their effects being most evident when they were given intravenously at a dose of 10(6) cells 7 to 14 days prior to microbial challenge. Thus, all mice pretreated with PCA-2 and challenged 14 days later with viable CA-6 cells lived through a 60-day observation period, whereas all control mice not treated with PCA-2 died within 3 days. In an attempt to correlate the immunostimulatory effects observed in vivo with possible modifications in in vitro functions, it was found that administration of PCA-2 was accompanied by an increase in the number of peripheral blood polymorphonuclear cells and by the activation in the spleen of cells with highly candidacidal activity in vitro. Moreover, the adoptive transfer of plastic-adherent cells from PCA-2-infected mice into histocompatible recipients conferred considerable protection against subsequent CA-6 challenge.
Content-boosted Collaborative Filtering using Semantic Similarity Measure

Collaborative filtering is one of the most used recommendation approaches in recommender systems. However, collaborative filtering systems have some major problems such as sparsity, scalability and cold-start problems. In this paper we focus on the sparsity and item cold-start problems in collaborative filtering in order to improve the quality of recommendations. We propose an approach that uses semantic similarities between items based on a priori defined ontology-based metadata in the movie domain. According to the semantic similarities between items and past user preferences, recommendations are made. The results of the evaluation phase show that our approach improves the quality of recommendations.
Effect of antibiotic therapy on asymptomatic bacteriuria in kidney transplant recipients.

PURPOSE Asymptomatic bacteriuria is a very common complication after kidney transplantation and the need for antibiotic therapy is controversial. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of antibiotic therapy on the clinical course of asymptomatic bacteriuria in renal transplant recipients. MATERIALS AND METHODS In the present study, 88 kidney transplant recipients with asymptomatic bacteriuria were divided into two groups of cases and controls. The patients had been selected from among those with at least 1 year follow-up. In the case group, asymptomatic bacteriuric episodes were treated with antibiotics, and in control group, they were followed without antibiotic therapy. The follow-up period was 9 to 12 months. Bacteriuric episodes, symptomatic urinary tract infection (UTI) episodes, and changes in plasma creatinine level were recorded and compared between the two groups. RESULTS The rate of bacteriuric episodes and symptomatic UTIs were not significantly different between the two groups (P >0.05). In addition, level of plasma creatinine did not increase significantly in neither of the groups during the study (P >0.05). CONCLUSION It seems that treatment of asymptomatic bacteriuria in kidney recipients does not decrease the rate of UTI episodes afterwards. Asymptomatic bacteriuria does not affect renal function in short term. Thus, we can abandon antibiotic therapy, subject to careful follow-up.
Does the angle of episiotomy affect the incidence of anal sphincter injury? *

Objective Mediolateral episiotomy is associated with lower rates of significant perineal tears than midline episiotomy. However, the relationship between precise angle of episiotomy from the perineal midline and risk of third‐degree tear has not been established. This study quantifies this relationship.
An architecture for enterprise application integration with Web services using MDA

While the information in this publication is believed to be accurate, IONA Technologies PLC makes no warranty of any kind to this material including, but not limited to, the implied warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose. IONA Technologies PLC shall not be liable for errors contained herein, or for incidental or consequential damages in connection with the furnishing, performance or use of this material. COPYRIGHT NOTICE No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written consent of IONA Technologies PLC. No third-party intellectual property right liability is assumed with respect to the use of the information contained herein. IONA Technologies PLC assumes no responsibility for errors or omissions contained in this white paper. This publication and features described herein are subject to change without notice. All products or services mentioned in this white paper are covered by the trademarks, service marks, or product names as designated by the companies that market those products. David Frankel is IONA's Chief Consulting Architect, and has worked in the area of distributed computing for many years. Mr. Frankel consults with IONA customers and internal groups and is a member of the Object Management Group (OMG) Architecture Board. He has been involved in the formulation and evolution of a number of OMG standards, including COM-CORBA Interworking and UML™. John Parodi is a Principal Writer in IONA's Information Design and Development group. He has more than twenty years of experience in technical communications and has produced trade press articles, technical overviews, presentations, and award-winning user documentation on topics that include programming, security, architecture, and enterprise-scale integration. Executive Summary This paper describes how the principles of the Object Management Group's Model Driven Architecture™ (MDA™) can be used to develop Web services in a way that improves programmer productivity and avoids rapid obsolescence of the services. MDA uses the Unified Modeling Language™ (UML™, a widely-accepted standard managed by the OMG) to capture and express the essence of information and services, and is thus the basis for MDA. In developing Web services, technology is secondary to the information and the services that use and create the information. Our goal should be to provide an environment in which those who produce individual Web services can do so in a way that is as independent of specific Web …
AN INTERDEPENDENCE THEORY OF ENTREPRENEURIAL OVEROPTIMISM: EVIDENCE FROM VENTURE CAPITAL-BACKED FIRMS

Drawing on interdependence theory, we explore the conditions under which entrepreneurs provide more overoptimistic forecasts to their investors. Using a proprietary longitudinal dataset of 321 forecasted and realized firm revenues as provided to a venture capitalist, our findings indicate that the longer the entrepreneur-investor relationship, the less overoptimistic the projections made. Further, entrepreneurs are more overoptimistic when there is a greater need to serve their own interests and there is more opportunity to do so, i.e. when they are about to raise a new round of financing and investor monitoring is low. We theoretically advance the literature by going beyond the simplified portrayal of entrepreneurs as naive optimists and identifying a timevarying and strategic component to the optimism conveyed to stakeholders.
MEDIÇÃO DA EVOLUÇÃO DA PRODUTIVIDADE TOTAL DOS FACTORES: O ÍNDICE DE MALMQUIST*

Dependendo a competitividade de um pais do valor e crescimento sustentado da produtividade das organizacoes economicas que integram a sua economia, para complemento da informacao proporcionada por indicadores parciais de performance, e de grande importância conseguirse um indicador capaz de captar as fontes e aferir de forma sintetica, objectiva e adequada a evolucao da produtividade das unidades como um todo. Este indicador e o indice de produtividade total dos factores (PTF), susceptivel de ser quantificado atraves dos numeros indices de Malmquist, Fischer ou Tornqvist, prestando-se neste texto especial atencao ao primeiro. O indice PTF de Malmquist e calculado com base em funcoes distância em relacao a funcao fronteira, recorrendo, para a estimacao desta, a metodos deterministas nao parametricos (DEA) ou a funcoes estocasticas parametricas (AFE). Para ilustrarmos o processo de calculo, aplicamos os dois metodos a um panel equilibrado de 26 exploracoes agricolas localizadas no Planalto Mirandes para o periodo 1990-97.
Platelet angiotensin II binding and plasma renin concentration, plasma renin substrate and plasma angiotensin II in human pregnancy.

1. The results are presented of a cross-sectional study of 25 non-pregnant and 125 pregnant/postnatal women in whom platelet angiotensin II binding and plasma angiotensin II, plasma renin concentration and plasma renin substrate were measured. 2. Platelet angiotensin II binding was significantly lower in the first-trimester patients as compared with the non-pregnant women (P less than 0.001). Specific binding remained low in the second and third trimesters, and in those patients studied 24 h after delivery. However, higher values, approximating to the non-pregnant level, were found 6 weeks postnatally (n = 25 for each group). 3. Plasma angiotensin II, plasma renin concentration and plasma renin substrate increased in pregnancy, with the increase becoming statistically significant as compared with the non-pregnant women in the second trimester. Maximal median values of plasma angiotensin II and plasma renin substrate were found in the third trimester, but maximal median values of plasma renin concentration were found in the second trimester. The concentrations of all three hormones fell after delivery. 4. There was an inverse correlation between platelet angiotensin II binding and simultaneously measured endogenous levels of plasma angiotensin II (P less than 0.02) and plasma renin substrate (P less than 0.05) in the 25 non-pregnant subjects. These findings support the concept of the angiotensin II receptor concentration being regulated by the plasma angiotensin II level. There was no correlation between platelet angiotensin II binding and plasma renin concentration. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
The use of comparative rating scales for the evaluation of psychophysical data.

It has been shown in previous studies that the absolute type of judgment commonly employed in rating scales may be utilized for psychophysical measurements as well as in the evaluation of responses which have no physically measureable stimuli.1 In the absolute method of judgment, although background stimuli may be introduced to serve as anchors, no direct comparison of variable and standard is required. In such cases it has been shown that the basis of judgment is the adaptation-level, defined as a weighted geometric mean of present and past stimuli. The question arises: Can the quantitative theory found adequate for absolute judgments be extended to direct comparison of standard and variables as in the method of constant stimulus differences? If this can be done then the
Sex Differences in the Brain: Implications for Explaining Autism

Empathizing is the capacity to predict and to respond to the behavior of agents (usually people) by inferring their mental states and responding to these with an appropriate emotion. Systemizing is the capacity to predict and to respond to the behavior of nonagentive deterministic systems by analyzing input-operation-output relations and inferring the rules that govern such systems. At a population level, females are stronger empathizers and males are stronger systemizers. The “extreme male brain” theory posits that autism represents an extreme of the male pattern (impaired empathizing and enhanced systemizing). Here we suggest that specific aspects of autistic neuroanatomy may also be extremes of typical male neuroanatomy.
Schistosomiasis and bladder cancer: similarities and differences from urothelial cancer

Through the years, schistosoma-associated bladder cancer was believed to be a unique entity of disease, different from urothelial cancer. As carcinogenesis is a highly complex process resulting from the accumulation of many genetic and epigenetic changes leading to alterations in the cell proliferation and regulation process, confirmation of their minute differences or similarities are extremely difficult. In bladder cancer, many of these carcinogenic cascades were not fully documented in spite of the efforts undertaken. The control of schistosomiasis and the subsequent decrease in the intensity of infestation showed feature changes approaching that of urothelial tumors. However, schistosoma-associated bladder cancer still presents in more advanced stages than schistosoma-non-associated urothelial cancer. Furthermore, many data were collected proving that, upon applying the same treatment protocol and management care, stage-by-stage comparison of the treatment end results were found to be similar in bladder cancer patients with the different etiologies.
Estado actual de las celdas solares basadas en capas absorbentes de bajo costo Cu2ZnSnS4, perspectivas y nuevos aportes realizados

En este articulo se hace una revision exhaustiva y completa del estado actual de las celdas solares que emplean el compuesto se- miconductor Cu2ZnSnS4 como capa absorbente siguiendo los procesos de manufactura de tecnologia de pelicula delgada. Como complemento se hace un resumen de los aportes mas signiﬁcativos hechos dentro del grupo de Materiales Semiconductores y Energia Solar de la Universidad Nacional de Colombia correspondientes a la sintesis y caracterizacion del compuesto Cu2ZnSnS4.
Pycnogenol ® enhances proliferation and mineralization in osteoblast-like MC 3 T 3E 1 cells

Pycnogenol (PYC) is a natural plant extract from the bark of Pinus pinaster Atiton that has potent anti-oxidant activities. Recent studies have shown that orally administered PYC can increase the biomechanical strength of bone and bone mineral density in ovariectomized rats. However, the effect of PYC on osteoblast mineralization has not yet been examined. We studied the differentiation and mineralization in mouse osteoblast-like MC3T3-E1 cells. PYC enhanced the metabolic activity dose dependently using an MTT assay by 120% (37.5 μg/ml) to 180% (375 μg/ml). The calcium depositions of the cells by alizarin red S staining were increased for 28 days after the culture with 375 μg/ml PYC. PYC activated the expression of estrogen receptor β (ERβ) about 2.8-fold for 28 days after the culture with 375 μg/ml PYC. These results suggest that PYC stimulates osteoblastic differentiation and mineralization via the expression of ERβ.