Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Coselection of Cadmium and Benzalkonium Chloride Resistance in Conjugative Transfers from Nonpathogenic Listeria spp. to Other Listeriae

ABSTRACT Resistance to the quaternary ammonium disinfectant benzalkonium chloride (BC) may be an important contributor to the ability of Listeria spp. to persist in the processing plant environment. Although a plasmid-borne disinfectant resistance cassette (bcrABC) has been identified in Listeria monocytogenes, horizontal transfer of these genes has not been characterized. Nonpathogenic Listeria spp. such as L. innocua and L. welshimeri are more common than L. monocytogenes in food processing environments and may contribute to the dissemination of disinfectant resistance genes in listeriae, including L. monocytogenes. In this study, we investigated conjugative transfer of resistance to BC and to cadmium from nonpathogenic Listeria spp. to other nonpathogenic listeriae, as well as to L. monocytogenes. BC-resistant L. welshimeri and L. innocua harboring bcrABC, along with the cadmium resistance determinant cadA2, were able to transfer resistance to other nonpathogenic listeriae as well as to L. monocytogenes of diverse serotypes, including strains from the 2011 cantaloupe outbreak. Transfer among nonpathogenic Listeria spp. was noticeably higher at 25°C than at 37°C, whereas acquisition of resistance by L. monocytogenes was equally efficient at 25 and 37°C. When the nonpathogenic donors were resistant to both BC and cadmium, acquisition of cadmium resistance was an effective surrogate for transfer of resistance to BC, suggesting coselection between these resistance attributes. The results suggest that nonpathogenic Listeria spp. may behave as reservoirs for disinfectant and heavy metal resistance genes for other listeriae, including the pathogenic species L. monocytogenes.
A mechanism converting psychosocial stress into mononuclear cell activation

Little is known about the mechanisms converting psychosocial stress into cellular dysfunction. Various genes, up-regulated in atherosclerosis but also by psychosocial stress, are controlled by the transcription factor nuclear factor κB (NF-κB). Therefore, NF-κB is a good candidate to convert psychosocial stress into cellular activation. Volunteers were subjected to a brief laboratory stress test and NF-κB activity was determined in peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC), as a window into the body and because PBMC play a role in diseases such as atherosclerosis. In 17 of 19 volunteers, NF-κB was rapidly induced during stress exposure, in parallel with elevated levels of catecholamines and cortisol, and returned to basal levels within 60 min. To model this response, mice transgenic for a strictly NF-κB-controlled β-globin transgene were stressed by immobilization. Immobilization resulted in increased β-globin expression, which could be reduced in the presence of the α1-adrenergic inhibitor prazosin. To define the role of adrenergic stimulation in the up-regulation of NF-κB, THP-1 cells were induced with physiological amounts of catecholamines for 10 min. Only noradrenaline resulted in a dose- and time-dependent induction of NF-κB and NF-κB-dependent gene expression, which depended on pertussis-toxin-sensitive G protein-mediated phosphophatidylinositol 3-kinase, Ras/Raf, and mitogen-activated protein kinase activation. Induction was reduced by α1- and β-adrenergic inhibitors. Thus, noradrenaline-dependent adrenergic stimulation results in activation of NF-κB in vitro and in vivo. Activation of NF-κB represents a downstream effector for the neuroendocrine response to stressful psychosocial events and links changes in the activity of the neuroendocrine axis to the cellular response.
Smoking elicits the insulin resistance syndrome: new aspects of the harmful effect of smoking

Smoking is a well-recognized major risk factor for cardiovascular disease (CVD) as well as for many other illnesses [ 13. Although many pharmacological actions are recognized, it has so far been unclear how smoking elicits its harmful effects [2]. However, recent studies have provided us with new insights into the deleterious effects of smoking and the risk for CVD. It has long been recognized that smokers exhibit a number of established risk factors for CVD such as elevated fibrinogen and triglyceride levels as well as lower high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol [3, 41. Smoking also increases the activity of the sympathetic nervous system and raises circulating catecholamines [ 51. Catecholamines, as well as other counter-regulatory hormones, are powerful antagonists of insulin action and induce insulin resistance in vivo. At least in part, this effect is caused by elevated cellular cAMP levels which both acutely and chronically impair insulin action (see Ref. 6 for review). The acute cellular effects seem to be related to an impaired docking and fusion process in the plasma membrane of key proteins involved in insulin’s signalling and action such as the insulin receptor and the glucose transporting proteins (glut 4). Furthermore, chronically elevated cAMP levels impair gene transcription and synthesis of glut 4 and probably also of the insulin receptor (unpublished observations). Thus, elevated catecholamine and cellular cAMP levels lead to insulin resistance and impairments of insulin action and protein synthesis that are reminiscent of the perturbations seen in type 2 diabetes, another insulin-resistant state. Recent studies have shown that smoking can acutely impair insulin action in normal subjects, probably as a result of the release of counterregulatory hormones [ 71. Furthermore, chronic
Power System State Estimation via Feasible Point Pursuit: Algorithms and Cramér-Rao Bound

Accurately monitoring the system's operating point is central to the reliable and economic operation of an autonomous energy grid. Power system state estimation (PSSE) aims to obtain complete voltage magnitude and angle information at each bus given a number of system variables at selected buses and lines. Power flow analysis amounts to solving a set of noise-free power flow equations, and is cast as a special case of PSSE. Physical laws dictate quadratic relationships between available quantities and unknown voltages, rendering general instances of power flow and PSSE nonconvex and NP-hard. Past approaches are largely based on gradient-type iterative procedures or semidefinite relaxation (SDR). Due to nonconvexity, the solution obtained via gradient-type schemes depends on initialization, while SDR methods do not perform as desired in challenging scenarios. This paper puts forth novel feasible point pursuit (FPP)-based solvers for power flow analysis and PSSE, which iteratively seek feasible solutions for a nonconvex quadratically constrained quadratic programming reformulation of the weighted least-squares (WLS). Relative to the prior art, the developed solvers offer superior numerical performance at the cost of higher computational complexity. Furthermore, they converge to a stationary point of the WLS problem. As a baseline for comparing different estimators, the Cramér-Rao lower bound is derived for the fundamental PSSE problem in this paper. Judicious numerical tests on several IEEE benchmark systems showcase markedly improved performance of our FPP-based solvers for both power flow and PSSE tasks over popular WLS-based Gauss–Newton iterations and SDR approaches.
Interferon-induced Transmembrane Protein 3 Is a Type II Transmembrane Protein*

Background: Interferon-induced transmembrane (IFITM) proteins are viral restriction factors with controversial topology. Results: Ifitm3 with an intracellular N terminus and extracellular C terminus is the predominant form and exhibits viral restriction activity. Conclusion: Ifitm3 is a type II transmembrane protein. Significance: An understanding of the interaction of Ifitm3 with potential targets and cofactors is predicated on a correct understanding of its topology. The interferon-induced transmembrane (IFITM) proteins are a family of small membrane proteins that inhibit the cellular entry of several genera of viruses. These proteins had been predicted to adopt a two-pass, type III transmembrane topology with an intracellular loop, two transmembrane helices (TM1 and TM2), and extracellular N and C termini. Recent work, however, supports an intramembrane topology for the helices with cytosolic orientation of both termini. Here we determined the topology of murine Ifitm3. We found that the N terminus of Ifitm3 could be stained by antibodies at the cell surface but that this conformation was cell type-dependent and represented a minority of the total plasma membrane pool. In contrast, the C terminus was readily accessible to antibodies at the cell surface and extracellular C termini comprised most or all of those present at the plasma membrane. The addition of a C-terminal KDEL endoplasmic reticulum retention motif to Ifitm3 resulted in sequestration of Ifitm3 in the ER, demonstrating an ER-luminal orientation of the C terminus. C-terminal, but not N-terminal, epitope tags were also degraded within lysosomes, consistent with their luminal orientation. Furthermore, epitope-tagged Ifitm3 TM2 functioned as a signal anchor sequence when expressed in isolation. Collectively, our results demonstrate a type II transmembrane topology for Ifitm3 and will provide insight into its interaction with potential targets and cofactors.
Unicompartmental knee arthroplasty for the treatment of medial femoral condyle primary osteonecrosis *

* From Instituto de Ortopedia e Traumatologia do Hospital das Clínicas da Faculdade de Medicina da Universidade de São Paulo (IOT-HC-FMUSP), and Hospital do Coração, SP, Brazil. 1. Assistant Surgeon, IOT-HC-FMUSP. 2. Physician, Hospital do Coração; Former Fellow, IOT-HC-FMUSP, Brazil. 3. Assistant Physician, Hospital Municipal Miguel Couto, RJ, Brazil; Fellow, Hospital do Coração, SP, Brazil. * Trabalho realizado no Instituto de Ortopedia e Traumatologia do Hospital das Clínicas da Faculdade de Medicina da Universidade de São Paulo (IOTHC-FMUSP) e no Hospital do Coração, SP. 1. Médico Assistente do IOT-HC-FMUSP. 2. Médico do Hospital do Coração e Ex-Estagiário do IOT-HC-FMUSP. 3. Médico Assistente do Hospital Municipal Miguel Couto, RJ e Estagiário do Hospital do Coração, SP. Endereço para correspondência (Correspondence to): Rua Oliveira Dias, 61 – 01433-030 – São Paulo, SP. Tels. : (11) 3885-0687 e 3887-9776; fax: (11) 3051-5444. Recebido em (Received in) 10/2/04. Aprovado para publicação em (Approved in) 21/6/04. Copyright RBO2004 ARTIGO ORIGINAL / ORIGINAL ARTICLE
An update-risk based approach to TTL estimation in Web caching

Web caching is an important technique for accelerating Web applications and reducing the load on the Web server and the network through local cache accesses. As in traditional data caching, Web caching poses the well-recognized problem of maintaining cache consistency. Web caching, however, has the advantage of delaying the refreshment of caches when the Web server updates the original data, i.e., Web caching tries to get better performance allowing tolerable inconsistency. This weak consistency requirement introduced the concept of time-to-live (TTL: the time during which the cached data item is expected to be valid) in the face of future updates. Subsequently, a number of methods have been invented to have the cache server estimate the TTL. However, the two well-known TTL estimation methods - the fixed TTL method and the heuristic method - do not allow intuitive understanding of the estimation processes and lack theoretical reasoning behind them, disallowing administrators from configuring the cache server by their intention. To mend these deficiencies, we propose the update-risk based TTL estimation method. This method uses a formal, yet intuitive, approach based on probabilistic analysis. In the proposed method, users provide the update risk as the probability that the original data will be updated within the estimated TTL. Then, based on our model, the cache server calculates the value of TTL using the update risk. The results of our experiments, performed using logs of a real cache server, show experimentally that the measured update risk closely matches that used to estimate TTL. Moreover, the notion of update risk is clear in its intention and semantics. These confirm the superiority of our method to conventional ones. We also show the impact of update risk on performance and consistency in order to help administrators select an appropriate value for update risk to obtain performance and consistency desired. In addition, we reassess the two aforementioned conventional methods in light of our method.
Evaluating the Predictive Validity of the Compas Risk and Needs Assessment System

This study examines the statistical validation of a recently developed, fourth-generation (4G) risk—need assessment system (Correctional Offender Management Profiling for Alternative Sanctions; COMPAS) that incorporates a range of theoretically relevant criminogenic factors and key factors emerging from meta-analytic studies of recidivism. COMPAS's automated scoring provides decision support for correctional agencies for placement decisions, offender management, and treatment planning. The article describes the basic features of COMPAS and then examines the predictive validity of the COMPAS risk scales by fitting Cox proportional hazards models to recidivism outcomes in a sample of presentence investigation and probation intake cases (N = 2,328). Results indicate that the predictive validities for the COMPAS recidivism risk model, as assessed by the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC), equal or exceed similar 4G instruments. The AUCs ranged from . 66 to . 80 for diverse offender subpopulations across three outcome criteria, with a majority of these exceeding . 70.
Phoneme categorization and discrimination in younger and older adults: a comparative analysis of perceptual, lexical, and attentional factors.

This study investigates the extent to which age-related language processing difficulties are due to a decline in sensory processes or to a deterioration of cognitive factors, specifically, attentional control. Two facets of attentional control were examined: inhibition of irrelevant information and divided attention. Younger and older adults were asked to categorize the initial phoneme of spoken syllables ("Was it m or n? "), trying to ignore the lexical status of the syllables. The phonemes were manipulated to range in eight steps from m to n. Participants also did a discrimination task on syllable pairs ("Were the initial sounds the same or different? "). Categorization and discrimination were performed under either divided attention (concurrent visual-search task) or focused attention (no visual task). The results showed that even when the younger and older adults were matched on their discrimination scores: (1) the older adults had more difficulty inhibiting lexical knowledge than did younger adults, (2) divided attention weakened lexical inhibition in both younger and older adults, and (3) divided attention impaired sound discrimination more in older than younger listeners. The results confirm the independent and combined contribution of sensory decline and deficit in attentional control to language processing difficulties associated with aging. The relative weight of these variables and their mechanisms of action are discussed in the context of theories of aging and language.
Learning Entity and Relation Embeddings for Knowledge Graph Completion

Knowledge graph completion aims to perform link prediction between entities. In this paper, we consider the approach of knowledge graph embeddings. Recently, models such as TransE and TransH build entity and relation embeddings by regarding a relation as translation from head entity to tail entity. We note that these models simply put both entities and relations within the same semantic space. In fact, an entity may have multiple aspects and various relations may focus on different aspects of entities, which makes a common space insufficient for modeling. In this paper, we propose TransR to build entity and relation embeddings in separate entity space and relation spaces. Afterwards, we learn embeddings by first projecting entities from entity space to corresponding relation space and then building translations between projected entities. In experiments, we evaluate our models on three tasks including link prediction, triple classification and relational fact extraction. Experimental results show significant and consistent improvements compared to state-of-the-art baselines including TransE and TransH.
Comparison of a Flow Assay for Brucellosis Antibodies with the Reference cELISA Test in West African Bos indicus

Brucellosis is considered by the Food and Agricultural Organisation and the World Health Organisation as one of the most widespread zoonoses in the world. It is a major veterinary public health challenge as animals are almost exclusively the source of infection for people. It is often undiagnosed in both human patients and the animal sources and it is widely acknowledged that the epidemiology of brucellosis in humans and animals is poorly understood, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa. It is therefore important to develop better diagnostic tools in order to improve our understanding of the epidemiology and also for use in the field for disease control and eradication. As with any new diagnostic test, it is essential that it is validated in as many populations as possible in order to characterise its performance and improve the interpretation of its results. This paper describes a comparison between a new lateral flow assasy (LFA) for bovine brucellosis and the widely used cELISA in a no gold standard analysis to estimate test performance in this West African cattle population. A Bayesian formulation of the Hui-Walter latent class model incorporated previous studies' data on sensitivity and specificity of the cELISA. The results indicate that the new LFA is very sensitive (∼87%) and highly specific (∼97%). The analysis also suggests that the current cut-off of the cELSIA may not be optimal for this cattle population but alternative cut-offs did not significantly change the estimates of the LFA. This study demonstrates the potential usefulness of this simple to use test in field based surveillance and control which could be easily adopted for use in developing countries with only basic laboratory facilities.
Auditors professional and organizational identities and commercialization in audit firms

The purpose of this paper is to explain how auditors’ professional and organizational identities are associated with commercialization in audit firms. Unlike previous studies exploring the consequences of commercialization in the firms, the study directs its attention toward the potential driver of commercialization, which the authors argue to be the identities of the auditors. ,The paper is based on 374 responses to a survey distributed to 3,588 members of FAR, the professional association of accountants, auditors and advisors in Sweden. The study used established measures of organizational and professional identity and introduced market, customer and firm process orientation as aspects of commercialization. The study explored the data through descriptive statistics, principle component analysis and correlation analysis and tested the hypotheses with multiple linear regression analysis. ,The findings indicated that the organizational identity of auditors has a positive association with three aspects of commercialization: market orientation, customer orientation and firm process orientation. Contrary to the arguments based on prior literature, the study has found that the professional identity of auditors is also a positively associated with commercialization. This indicates a change of the role of professional identity vis-a-vis commercialization of audit firms. The positive association between professional identity and commercial orientation could indicate the development of “organizational professionalism. ” The study also found differences between the association between professional identity and commercialization in Big 4 and non-Big 4 firms. While in Big 4 firms, professional identity is positively associated only with the firm’s process orientation, in non-Big 4 firms, professional identity has a positive association with all three aspects of commercialization. ,The paper provides insight into how auditors’ identities have influenced commercialization of audit firms and into the normalizing of commercialization within auditing. The study also developed a new instrument for measuring commercialization, one based on market, customer and firm process orientation concepts. This paper suggests that this instrument is an alternative to the observation through proxies.
Pitting Corrosion of Super Duplex Stainless Steel - Effect of Tungsten and Isothermal Heat Treatments

Duplex stainless steels (DSS) and super duplex stainless steels (SDSS) can be described as austenitic-ferritic stainless steels with a chromium content of 22 and 25 %, respectively. Because of their good combination of superior corrosion resistance in chloride containing environments and high strength, together with a competitive cost, they are widely used in many industries. During production and fabrication of DSS and SDSS, they are exposed to heat treatments and welding. Since they also have a high content of alloying elements, they are prone to precipitation of deleterious intermetallic phases. When exposed to temperatures in the range of 800◦C to 900◦C, which is the most interesting in this work, precipitation of σand χ-phase, concurrently with γ2, are the most detrimental intermetallic phases. Due to these intermetallic phases, the duplex steels are prone to localized corrosion. This is because chromium and molybdenum are depleted from mainly ferrite, but also from the austenite phase. To delay the precipitation of σ-phase, it has been proposed to partially replace molybdenum with tungsten (W), which promotes the precipitation of χ-phase. There are opposing opinions about the e ect of tungsten addition in promoting χ phase precipitation. Some claim the χ-phase to be more detrimental than the σ-phase, while others look at the χ-phase as less deleterious, yet others have suggested that tungsten accelerated the precipitation of all deleterious phases, including χand σ-phase. To examine how tungsten substitution a ects the corrosion resistance of SDSS during isothermal heat treatments, two SDSS grades with 0 wt% and 2.1 wt% W was investigated. The results of this work were compared with previously obtained results by another student on a SDSS grade with 0.62 wt% W. Before electrochemical measurements, the test samples were solution annealed at 1110◦C and isothermally heat treated at 790◦C, 846◦C and 920◦C at di erent holding times. The electrochemical measurements consisted of an open circuit potential (OCP) measurement while exposed in 6 wt% ferric chloride solution with increasing temperature, to nd the critical pitting temperature (CPT), and recording of anodic cyclic potentiodynamic polarization (CPP) curves. Prior to electrochemical measurements, another student performed metallographic examinations on the three mentioned SDSS grades. The in uence of the microstructure was quanti ed by comparing the outcome of the electrochemical results with the detailed