Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
‘ Single Colony PCR ’ using physical method of DNA recovery for the characterization of tiny colonies of Mycobacterium avium subspecies paratuberculosis

INTRODUCTION Johne’s disease (JD) is a serious infection of animals caused by Mycobacterium avium subspecies paratuberculosis (MAP). Johne’s is not a priority in India. Therefore, information on prevalence in 465.50 million domestic ruminants have not been estimated nor realized, mainly due to lack of indigenous diagnostic kits. Diagnosis is difficult due to long incubation, absence of characteristic symptoms, problems in cultivation of MAP and non-specific results in Johnin test. Until 1989, when IS900 was discovered in the MAP genome, characterization was difficult. IS900 is specifically present in 14-18 copies in MAP (Green et al., 1989) facilitating specific identification in PCR. However, PCR is still not a convenient test to standardize mainly due to difficulties in isolation of genomic DNA. MAP has rigid cell wall which is very difficult to break (Garrido et al., 2000; Hammer et al., 2000). Therefore, MAP cells must be primarily prepared before DNA isolation and selection of method of isolation of mycobacterial DNA essentially determines success of PCR. The best method for isolation of mycobacterial DNA is a combination of physical, chemical and enzymatic methods (Fus et al., 2003; Hosek et al., 2006), successfully employed by van Soolingen et al. (1993). However, a loopful of culture as starting material is required. But minute colonies of MAP were usually lost on prolonged incubation / contamination / drying of media and desired loopful growth has rarely been available (Kumar et al., 2007). Attempts to isolate DNA from a few colonies were consistently negative. The current study aimed to compare routinely used a standard DNA isolation method with a new non-chemical (physical) method and further characterization by IS900 PCR.
Environmental Contaminants and Human Infertility: Hypothesis or Cause for Concern?

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s the crude human birth rate (live births per 1000 population) declined, indicating reduced fertility and suggesting a potential decline in fecundity (the potential to conceive). Detection of environmental contaminants in human tissues, together with reports of a global decline in semen quality, further fueled speculation that human infertility rates are increasing and environmental toxicants are potentially important causal agents associated with this change. However, there is little compelling evidence to suggest that infertility rates amongst the general population have changed over time. Moreover, recent studies suggest a rise in the fertility rates. While several studies documented increased time to pregnancy (TTP) in exposed study populations, other investigators were not able to replicate these findings. Nevertheless, studies involving occupational exposure together with results from animal experiments lend support to the conclusion that environmental contaminants potentially adversely affect fertility. Consequently, the impact of exposure to environmental contaminants on human fertility remains controversial. To test the hypothesis that environmental contaminant exposure was associated with enhanced risk of infertility, data concerning trends in fertility and infertility rates were examined to assess the impact of exposure of developing gametes to environmental contaminants. The relationship between exposure and reproductive outcomes was then examined to illustrate the range of adverse effects for reproductive toxicants with data sets of divergent depth and reliability. Data showed that only a weak association between exposure to environmental contaminants and adverse effects on human fertility exists. However, it is postulated that evidence of chemical exposure and potential health consequences of these exposures highlight the need for further research in this area.
Árveknimiðuð hugræn meðferð við sjúklegum kvíða. Frumraun á Íslandi

6 Efnisyfirlit . 8 Töfluskrá . 10 Inngangur . 11 Kvíði og helstu kvíðaraskanir . 11 Skelfingarkvíði (panic disorder) . 12 Félagsfælni . 13 Sértæk fælni . 13 Áráttu-þráhyggjuröskun . 14 Áfallastreituröskun . 15 Almenn kvíðaröskun . 16 Hugræn atferlismeðferð . 16 Hvað er hugræn atferlismeðferð? 17 Helstu aðferðir hugrænnar atferlismeðferðar . 18 Hugrænar aðferðir . 19 Hegðunartilraunir . 21 Árangur hugrænnar atferlismeðferðar við kvíðaröskunum . 21 Hugræn atferlismeðferð við kvíða: Er einhverju við að bæta? 24 Árvekni . 25 Hvað er árvekni? 26 Samtvinnun árvekni og hugrænnar atferlismeðferðar . 27 Árvekni í meðferðarstarfi . 27 Árveknimiðuð streituminnkun (MBSR) . 28 Árveknimiðuð hugræn meðferð (MBCT) . 29 Díalektísk meðferð (DBT) . 31 Sáttarog skuldbindingarmeðferð (ACT) . 32 Bakslagsvörn (RP) . 34 Samantekt og markmið rannsóknarinnar . 35 Aðferð . 36 Þátttakendur . 36 Mælitæki. 37 Mælikvarði Becks á kvíða (Becks Anxiety Inventory) . 37
Exogenous Hyoluronidoses ond Degradotion of Hyoluronic Acid in the Rabbit Eye

s. Invest Ophthalmol Vis Sci 22(Suppl):93, 1982. 3. Comper WD and Laurent TC: Physiological function of connective tissue polysaccharides. Physiol Rev 38:255, 1978. 4. Barany EH: In vitro studies on the resistance to flow through the angle of the anterior chamber. Acta Soc Med Upsal 59:260,
COLORIS: A dynamic cache partitioning system using page coloring

Shared caches in multicore processors are subject to contention from co-running threads. The resultant interference can lead to highly-variable performance for individual applications. This is particularly problematic for real-time applications, requiring predictable timing guarantees. Previous work has applied page coloring techniques to partition a shared cache, so that conflict misses are minimized amongst co-running workloads. However, prior page coloring techniques have not addressed the problem of partitioning a cache on over-committed processors where there are more executable threads than cores. Similarly, page coloring techniques have not proven efficient at adapting the cache partition sizes for threads with varying memory demands. This paper presents a memory management framework called COLORIS, which provides support for both static and dynamic cache partitioning using page coloring. COLORIS supports novel policies to reconfigure the assignment of page colors amongst application threads in over-committed systems. For quality-of-service (QoS), COLORIS monitors the cache miss rates of running applications and triggers re-partitioning of the cache to prevent miss rates exceeding applications-specific ranges. This paper presents the design and evaluation of COLORIS as applied to Linux. We show the efficiency and effectiveness of COLORIS to color memory pages for a set of SPEC CPU2006 workloads, thereby enhancing performance isolation over existing page coloring techniques.
Visual Factors in Reading.

Editorial. Piers Cornelissen. 1. Visual constraints in written word recognition: evidence from the optimal viewing-position effect. Marc Brysbaert and Tatjana Nazir. 2. Pre-schoolers, print and storybooks: an observational study using eye movement analysis. Laura M. Justice, Lori Skibbe, Andrea Canning and Chris Lankford. 3.Hemispheric division of labour in reading. Richard C. Shillcock and Scott A. McDonald. 4. Dissociations between serial position and number of letters effects in lateralised visual word recognition. Michal Lavidor and Peter J. Bailey. 5. Letter-position encoding and dyslexia. Carol Whitney and Piers Cornelissen. 6. The word shape hypothesis re-examined: evidence for an external feature advantage in visual word recognition. John R. Beech and Kate A. Mayall. 7. Integration of the visual and auditory networks in dyslexia: a theoretical perspective. Kristen Pammer and Trichur R. Vidyasagar. 8. The effect of print size on reading speed in dyslexia. Beth A. O'Brien, J. Stephen Mansfield and Gordon E. Legge. 9. The relationship between dyslexia and Meares-Irlen Syndrome. Isla Kriss and Bruce J.W. Evans. 10. Visual stress in adults with and without dyslexia. Chris Singleton and Susannah Trotter. Notes on Contributors. Index
Nucleic Acid Is a Novel Ligand for Innate, Immune Pattern Recognition Collectins Surfactant Proteins A and D and Mannose-binding Lectin*

Collectins are a family of innate immune proteins that contain fibrillar collagen-like regions and globular carbohydrate recognition domains (CRDs). The CRDs of these proteins recognize various microbial surface-specific carbohydrate patterns, particularly hexoses. We hypothesized that collectins, such as pulmonary surfactant proteins (SPs) SP-A and SP-D and serum protein mannose-binding lectin, could recognize nucleic acids, pentose-based anionic phosphate polymers. Here we show that collectins bind DNA from a variety of origins, including bacteria, mice, and synthetic oligonucleotides. Pentoses, such as arabinose, ribose, and deoxyribose, inhibit the interaction between SP-D and mannan, one of the well-studied hexose ligands for SP-D, and biologically relevant d-forms of the pentoses are better competitors than the l-forms. In addition, DNA and RNA polymer-related compounds, such as nucleotide diphosphates and triphosphates, also inhibit the carbohydrate binding ability of SP-D, or ∼60 kDa trimeric recombinant fragments of SP-D that are composed of the α-helical coiled-coil neck region and three CRDs (SP-D(n/CRD)) or SP-D(n/CRD) with eight GXY repeats (SPD(GXY)8(n/CRD)). Direct binding and competition studies suggest that collectins bind nucleic acid via their CRDs as well as by their collagen-like regions, and that SP-D binds DNA more effectively than do SP-A and mannose-binding lectin at physiological salt conditions. Furthermore, the SP-D(GXY)8(n/CRD) fragments co-localize with DNA, and the protein competes the interaction between propidium iodide, a DNA-binding dye, and apoptotic cells. In conclusion, we show that collectins are a new class of proteins that bind free DNA and the DNA present on apoptotic cells by both their globular CRDs and collagen-like regions. Collectins may therefore play an important role in decreasing the inflammation caused by DNA in lungs and other tissues.
Decision science and technology. Reflections on the contributions of Ward Edwards

Preliminaries. Introduction. 1. Introduction to a Festschrift B.A. Mellers. Behavioral Decision Theory. 2. On the Interplay of Riskless and Risky Utility R.D. Luce. 3. The Paradoxes of Allais, Stochastic Dominance, and Decision Weights M.H. Birnbaum. Who's Afraid of a Little Risk? New Evidence for General Risk Aversion E.U. Weber. 5. Manipulating Hedonic Strategies of Choice A. Schwartz, et al. 6. How Good are Fast and Frugal Heuristics? G. Gigerenzer, et al. 7. Decision Making by Domain Experts: The GNAHM Effect J. Shanteau. Decision Analysis. 8. On the Relevance of Behavioral Decision Research for Decision Analysis D. von Winterfeldt. 9. Evaluation of Probabilities: A Level Playing Field? R.L. Winkler. 10. A Robust Bayesian Look at the THeory of Precise Measurement E. Moreno, et al. 11. Probabilistic Reasoning and the Science of Complexity D.A. Schum. 12. Linear Inequalities and the Analysis of Multi-Attribute Value Matrices F. Hutton Barron, B.E. Barrett. 13. Life and Death Decisions for Individuals and Couples R.A. Howard. 14. Robot Ethics, Value Systems and Decision Theoretic Behaviors T.S. Levitt. 15. Decision-Theoretic Troubleshooting: A Framework for Repair and Experiment J.S. Breese, D. Heckerman. Decisions in Society. 16. Public Values and Public Policy R.L. Keeney. 17. Group Elicitation of Probability Distributions: Are Many Heads Better then One? L.D. Phillips. 18. The QALY Model: Utilities for Cost-Utility Analysis in Health Care D.G. Fryback. 19. Risk Analysis, Decision Analysis, and the Social Context for Risk Decision Making P. Slovic, R. Gregory. Historical Notes. 20. The Making of Decision Theory P.C. Fishburn. 21. A Brief History of SPUDM, or How Europe Took Off on Behavioral Decision Research C. Vlek. 22. Ward Edwards and New Professional Organizations J. Shanteau, et al. 23. Some Reflections on Ward Edwards D.A. Schum. The Last Word. 24. Festschrift: A Book and a Party W. Edwards.
On Some of My Conjectures in Number Theory and Combinatorics

During my very long life I have made many conjectures in these subjects and have written several papers with similar titles. To avoid repetition as much as possible I will mainly mention problems where significant progress has been made in the last year. I start with an old conjecture of mine on the divisors of numbers. 1 . Denote by T(n) the number of divisors of n. 1 = d 1 < d 2 <. <d T (n) = n i n. I conjectured about 45 years ago that for almost all n (i .e .,for all n, neglecting a sequence of density 1)) we have (1) min d i+1/ d i My first idea was to attack (1) as follows : Let m • e primitive with respect to the property (1) i£ m satisfies (1) but no proper divisor of m satisfies it. Let u I <u 2 <. be the sequence of primitive numbers. Clearly the integer^ satisfying (1) are the multiples of the u's. Thus to prove my conjecture it would only be necessary to prove that the set of multiples of the u's has a density and that this density is 1. This method was successful for the primitive abundant numbers, but the sum of the reciprocals of the primitive abundant numbers converges and the density of the abundant numbers is <1 [1j. Here I could p ro-. r e that L Land that the den-u .
Community Satisfaction with Policing: The Western Australian Experience

Introduction In recent years, police forces, like many other public sector organizations, have accepted that community reactions and attitudes play an important part in their success and that public satisfaction is a valid indicator of a police force's performance (Hatry et al., 1977; Swanton et al., 1988). However, there has been little reported investigation ofthe way community satisfaction with policing is determined, nor of the implications of its generation for the development of policing strategies. One possible approach to understanding community satisfaction, that has been widely used in the product satisfaction area, is the confirmation/disconfirmation paradigm. This model suggests satisfaction is generated by people comparing their expectations for a product with their perceptions of what they received (Day, 1977; Oliver, 1980). When expectations are exceeded, a positive judgment (confirmation) is made and the person is "satisfied". However, if expectations are not met, then a negative judgment (disconfirmation) is made and dissatisfaction results (Woodruff, Cadotte and Jenkins, 1983). While this model is widely accepted in the product satisfaction area, it has not been widely used in the services area, within which policing falls. However, there have been a number of service-related suggestions, flowing from discussions about service quality and its role in generating satisfaction. For example, Gronroos (1990) suggested that quality has a functional (or process) and an outcome dimension and that both aspects are generated by comparing expectations with perceived performance in a similar fashion to the confirmation/disconfirmation approach already mentioned. Similarly, Parasuraman, Berry and Zeithaml (1988) hypothesized that people evaluated service quality through the "gap" between expectations and service perceptions. They consequently developed a "generic" measure of service quality (termed SERVQUAL), across five dimensions: reliability, tangibles, responsiveness, empathy and assurance. Parasuraman et al. (1988) argued that the smaller the gap between people's expectations and perceptions, the better would be their assessment of quality and the greater would be their satisfaction and subsequently, for a police force, the greater their likely support. Whether this is true for policing, with its special and often difficult place in the community, is a matter for empirical
User experience evaluation metrics for usable accounting tools

Small Medium and Micro Enterprises (SMMEs) have become active instruments for poverty alleviation, employment generation as well as economic and social development. However, SMMEs in developing countries operate under effervescent business environments characterised by high inflation rates, poor technology infrastructure, lack of business expertise and resources. There is a need for these organisations to strategically align their business processes for them to adapt and survive in the operating environment turbulence. There are dozens of application software designed specifically to support SMME business processes on the market. On the contrary, software developers pay little attention to the user experience and usability aspects of their products resulting in the packages falling short on overall usability. Highly usable applications improve users' productivity, satisfaction and service quality delivery. Hence SMMEs in developing countries should implement software tools with usable user interfaces. Considering the applications' usability failure it becomes vital to research the user experiences of a typical accounting tool commonly used in developing countries' SMMEs. This paper proposes evaluation metrics that are applicable to evaluate the User Experience (UX) of a chosen accounting tool commonly used in developing countries. The paper introduces a brief background on the current situation in typical developing countries' SMMEs. A discussion on the accounting tools used in SMMEs operating in developing countries follows with a definition of UX, its facets and evaluation methods. Evaluation results on the UX of Pastel accounting, Xpress 2009 is presented. The paper culminates with metrics proposed to evaluate the user experience of accounting tools and proposes future work to improve on the proposed metrics.
Effects of hemoglobin C and S traits on eight glycohemoglobin methods.

Pure Appl Chem 1996;68:1831–6. 8. Colyer CL, Tang T, Chiem N, Harrison DJ. Clinical potential of microchip capillary electrophoresis systems. Electrophoresis 1997;18:1733–41. 9. Hofgartner WT, Huhmer AFR, Landers JP, Kant JA. Rapid diagnosis of herpes simplex encephalitis using microchip electrophoresis of PCR products. Clin Chem 1999;45:2120–8. 10. Chen YH, Wang WC, Young KC, Chang TT, Chen SH. Plastic microchip electrophoresis for analysis of PCR products of hepatitis C virus. Clin Chem 1999;45:1938–43. 11. Munro NJ, Snow K, Kant JA, Landers JP. Molecular diagnostics on microfabricated electrophoretic devices: from slab gelto capillaryto microchipbased assays for Tand B-cell lymphoproliferative disorders. Clin Chem 1999;45:1906–17. 12. Tian H, Jaquins-Gerstl A, Munro N, Trucco M, Brody LC, Landers JP. Single-strand conformation polymorphism analysis by capillary and microchip electrophoresis: a fast, simple method for detection of common mutations in BRCA1 and BRCA2. Genomics 2000;63:25–34. 13. Ferrance J, Landers JP. Exploiting sensitive laser-induced fluorescence detection on electrophoretic microchips for executing rapid clinical diagnostics. Luminescence 2001;16:1–10. 14. Muller O, Hahnenberger K, Dittmann M, Yee H, Dubrow R, Nagle R, Ilsley D. A microfluidic system for high-speed reproducible DNA sizing and quantitation. Electrophoresis 2000;21:128–34. 15. Ausubel FM, Brent R, Kingston RE, Moore DD, Seidman JG, Smith JA, Struhl K. Short protocols in molecular biology, 3rd ed. New York: Wiley, 1995:28– 41. 16. Cha RS, Thilly WG. Specificity, efficiency, and fidelity of PCR. In: Dieffenback CW, Dveksler GS, eds. PCR primer: a laboratory manual. Plainview, NY: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, 1995:37–52. 17. Yau SC, Bobrow M, Mathew CG, Abbs SJ. Accurate diagnosis of carriers of deletions and duplications in Duchenne/Becker muscular dystrophy by fluorescent dosage analysis. J Med Genet 1996;33:550–8. 18. Pancholi P, Oda RP, Mitchell PS, Persing DA, Landers JP. Clinical diagnostic detection of hepatitis C and herpes simplex viral PCR amplification products by capillary electrophoresis with laser-induced fluorescence. Mol Diagn 1997;2:27–38.
Fukushima Update: Radioactive Fallout and Mortality Increases in the United States: Is There a Correlation?

Our publication of “An Unexpected Mortality Increase in the United States Follows Arrival of the Radioactive Plume from Fukushima: Is There a Correlation? ” in the International Journal of Health Services 42(1) reported an unusually elevated number of excess deaths in 122 U.S. cities during the 14 weeks following the mid-March 2011 arrival of airborne radioactive fallout from Japan. The publication has received considerable attention from scientists, media, and the public, since it is the first peer-reviewed publication to examine population-based data before and after the meltdowns at Fukushima. Most of the responses have been objective or supportive, with a minority offering criticisms of the methods and results. In this paper, we respond to several of the critiques, offering supportive evidence from our research and supportive research in the medical literature. We hope our comments are constructive and we view our research as a correlation, and potential evidence of a causal link, between radioactive exposures from Fukushima and increased health risk, underscoring the need for additional and prompt reports on the topic.
Synthesizing high utility suggestions for rare web search queries

Search engines are continuously looking into methods to alleviate users' effort in finding desired information. For this, all major search engines employ query suggestions methods to facilitate effective query formulation and reformulation. Providing high quality query suggestions is a critical task for search engines and so far most research efforts have focused on tapping various information available in search query logs to identify potential suggestions. By relying on this single source of information, suggestion providing systems often restrict themselves to only previously observed query sessions. Therefore, a critical challenge faced by query suggestions provision mechanism is that of coverage, i.e., the number of unique queries for which users are provided with suggestions, while keeping the suggestion quality high. To address this problem, we propose a novel way of generating suggestions for user search queries by moving beyond the dependency on search query logs and providing synthetic suggestions for web search queries. The key challenges in providing synthetic suggestions include identifying important concepts in a query and systematically exploring related concepts while ensuring that the resulting suggestions are relevant to the user query and of high utility. We present an end-to-end system to generate synthetic suggestions that builds upon novel query-level operations and combines information available from various textual sources. We evaluate our suggestion system over a large-scale real-world dataset of query logs and show that our methods increase the coverage of query-suggestion pairs by up to 39% without compromising the quality or the utility of the suggestions.