Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The CD40/CD40 Ligand Interaction Is Required for Resistance to Toxoplasmic Encephalitis

ABSTRACT Since the CD40/CD40 ligand (CD40L) interaction is involved in the regulation of macrophage production of interleukin 12 (IL-12) and T-cell production of gamma interferon (IFN-γ), effector cell functions associated with resistance to Toxoplasma gondii, the role of CD40L in immunity to this parasite was assessed. Infection of C57BL/6 mice with T. gondii results in an upregulation of CD40 expression on accessory cell populations at local sites of infection as well as in lymphoid tissues. Splenocytes from C57BL/6 mice infected with T. gondii for 5 days produced high levels of IL-12 and IFN-γ when stimulated with toxoplasma lysate antigen, and blocking CD40L did not significantly alter the production of IFN-γ or IL-12 by these cells. Similar results were observed with splenocytes and mononuclear cells isolated from the brains of chronically infected mice. Interestingly, although CD40L−/− mice infected withT. gondii produced less IL-12 than wild-type mice, they produced comparable levels of IFN-γ but succumbed to toxoplasmic encephalitis 4 to 5 weeks after infection. The inability of CD40L−/− mice to control parasite replication in the brain correlated with the ability of soluble CD40L, in combination with IFN-γ, to activate macrophages in vitro to control replication ofT. gondii. Together, these results identify an important role for the CD40/CD40L interaction in resistance to T. gondii. However, this interaction may be more important in the control of parasite replication in the brain rather than the generation of protective T-cell responses during toxoplasmosis.
Webcasting Adoption: Technology Fluidity,-User 'Innovativeness, and Media Substitution

Even though a tremendous adoption growth-triggered by the increased broadband connections to Internet user homes- has occurred since 2001 , little is known regarding who the early adopters may be, the reasons why they adopt webcasting and what types of content will be most viable for adoption. This study examined the potential factors that could help predict webcasting adoption. In particular, it utilized several theoretical elements to explore audience interest in adopting broadcast video streaming via webcasting. It also assessed user interests in accessing' local webcast programming. A national sample of 454 Internet users was interviewed in a telephone survey. Study results provided strong support for the proposed theoretical framework that integrated the theories of technology fluidity, adopter innovativeness, and media substitution.
Cardiac Magnetic Resonance Imaging in Ischemic Heart Disease

Cardiac magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has emerged as a prime player in the clinical and preclinical detection of ischemic heart disease (IHD) as well in the prognosis assessment by offering a comprehensive approach for all spectrums of coronary artery disease (CAD) patients. The aim of this review is to provide the reader a state–of–the art on how the newest cardiac MRI techniques can be used to study IHD patients. In patients with suspected/stable CAD, functional and perfusion imaging both at rest and during vasodilatatory stress (adenosine, dypiridamole)/dobutamine stress can accurately depict ischemic myocardium secondary to significant coronary artery stenosis. In patients with acute MI, MRI is a robust tool for differentiating and sizing the jeopardized and the infarcted myocardium by using a combination of functional, edema, perfusion and Gd contrast imaging. Moreover, important prognostic factors like myocardial salvage, the presence of microvascular obstruction (MVO), post reperfusion myocardial hemorrhage, RV involvement and infarct related complications can be assessed in the same examination. In patients with chronic ischemic cardiomyopathy, the role of the MRI extends from diagnosis by means of Gadolinium contrast scar imaging to therapy and prognosis by functional assessment and viability testing with rest and dobutamine stress imaging. In all the circumstances mentioned, MRI derived information has been proven valuable in every day clinical decision making and prognosis assessment. Thus, MRI is becoming more and more an accepted alternative to other imaging modalities both in the acute and chronic setting.
Neuroprotection Mediated by Glial Cell Line-Derived Neurotrophic Factor: Involvement of a Reduction of NMDA-Induced Calcium Influx by the Mitogen-Activated Protein Kinase Pathway

The glial cell line-derived neurotrophic factor (GDNF) is first characterized for its trophic activity on dopaminergic neurons. Recent data suggested that GDNF could modulate the neuronal death induced by ischemia. The purpose of this study was to characterize the influence of GDNF on cultured cortical neurons subjected to two paradigms of injury (necrosis and apoptosis) that have been identified during cerebral ischemia and to determine the molecular mechanisms involved. First, we demonstrated that both neurons and astrocytes express the mRNA and the protein for GDNF and its receptor complex (GFRα-1 and c-Ret). Next, we showed that the application of recombinant human GDNF to cortical neurons and astrocytes induces the activation of the MAP kinase (MAPK) pathway, as visualized by an increase in the phosphorylated forms of extracellular signal-regulated kinases (ERKs). Thereafter, we demonstrated that GDNF fails to prevent apoptotic neuronal death but selectively attenuates slowly triggered NMDA-induced excitotoxic neuronal death via a direct effect on cortical neurons. To further characterize the neuroprotective mechanisms of GDNF against NMDA-mediated neuronal death, we showed that a pretreatment with GDNF reduces NMDA-induced calcium influx. This effect likely results from a reduction of NMDA receptor activity rather than an enhanced buffering or extrusion capacity for calcium. Finally, we also demonstrated that an ERKs activation pathway is necessary for GDNF-mediated reduction of the NMDA-induced calcium response. Together, these results describe a novel mechanism by which the activation of MAPK induced by GDNF modulates NMDA receptor activity, a mechanism that could be responsible for the neuroprotective effect of GDNF in acute brain injury.
Fusion and Fission of Cognitive Functions in the Human Parietal Cortex

How is higher cognitive function organized in the human parietal cortex? A century of neuropsychology and 30 years of functional neuroimaging has implicated the parietal lobe in many different verbal and nonverbal cognitive domains. There is little clarity, however, on how these functions are organized, that is, where do these functions coalesce (implying a shared, underpinning neurocomputation) and where do they divide (indicating different underlying neural functions). Until now, there has been no multi-domain synthesis in order to reveal where there is fusion or fission of functions in the parietal cortex. This aim was achieved through a large-scale activation likelihood estimation (ALE) analysis of 386 studies (3952 activation peaks) covering 8 cognitive domains. A tripartite, domain-general neuroanatomical division and 5 principles of cognitive organization were established, and these are discussed with respect to a unified theory of parietal functional organization.
Safety and immunogenicity of live oral cholera and typhoid vaccines administered alone or in combination with antimalarial drugs, oral polio vaccine, or yellow fever vaccine.

The effects of concomitant administration of antimalarial drugs, oral polio vaccine, or yellow fever vaccine on the immune response elicited by the Vibrio cholerae CVD103-HgR and Salmonella typhi Ty21a live oral vaccines were investigated. Healthy adults were immunized with CVD103-HgR alone or combined with Ty21a. Subjects were randomized to simultaneously receive mefloquine, chloroquine or proguanil, or oral polio or yellow fever vaccine. The vibriocidal antibody seroconversion rate was significantly reduced (P = .008) only in the group that received chloroquine with the CVD103-HgR. The geometric mean vibriocidal antibody titer was significantly decreased in the groups that received chloroquine (P = .001) or mefloquine (P = .02) compared with titers in groups that received CVD103-HgR alone. However, similar immunosuppressive effects were not observed in the groups immunized with Ty21a and CVD103-HgR. Only the concomitant administration of proguanil effected a significant (P = .013) decline in the anti-S. typhi lipopolysaccharide antibody response. These results indicate that chloroquine and proguanil should not be simultaneously administered with the CVD103-HgR and Ty21a vaccine strains, respectively.
Parasitologic Assessment of Two-Dose and Monthly Intermittent Preventive Treatment of Malaria during Pregnancy with Sulphadoxine-Pyrimethamine (IPTP-SP) in Lagos, Nigeria

Intermittent preventive treatment of malaria with sulphadoxine-pyrimethamine (IPTP-SP) is a key strategy in the control of malaria in pregnancy. However, reports of increasing level of resistance to SP using nonpregnant populations have made it imperative for the continuous monitoring of the efficacy of SP in pregnant women. This study assessed using microscopy, monthly dosing and the standard two-dose regimen among 259 pregnant women attending antenatal clinics in Lagos, Nigeria that consented 122 in the two-dose arm (Arm A) and 137 in the monthly dose arm (Arm B). Baseline parasitaemia in the two groups was 5 (4.1%) and 3 (2.2%) in Arms A and B, respectively. Few of the women developed parasitaemia after the initial SP dose in Arms A 4 (3.3%) and B 2 (1.5%). However, none of the women had malaria infection after the second dose in both Arms. Although IPTP-SP is suggestive of protecting the women from malaria infection, there was no significant difference observed between the two dosing schemes.
for sex offenders: An exAMInATIon of THe effecTs of APPeArAnce And gender on THe PublIc's PercePTIon of sex offenders

The purpose of the current study was to investigate judgments made about a teacher being accused of criminal sexual contact with a student, where gender and attractiveness of the teacher are manipulated. We investigated whether attractiveness and gender of the alleged perpetrator impact mock juror assessment of length of sentence, length of time on the registry, likelihood of recidivism, conviction rating, victim blame and empathy. Participants (N = 180) were asked to read a vignette and respond to questionnaires. Our results suggest that attractiveness-driven halo effects are not ubiquitous, but rather interact with the gender of the perpetrator and if mock jurors believed the actions of the teacher was a sex offense. Participants who did not believe a sexual offense was committed did not convict the attractive male teacher, but they strongly convicted the attractive female teacher. There was no difference in conviction ratings across conditions for those who believed a sex offense occurred.
EFFICIENCY OF THREE BINDING AGENTS ON THE IMMOBILIZATION OF CADMIUM IN SOILS UNDER MEDICINAL AND SPICE PLANTS CULTIVATION IN AGRO-FORESTRY SYSTEMS

The soil is an important resource, which sustains life on the planet. However, its contamination with Cadmium (Cd) may represent a huge threat to all the chain of living beings. Efforts have been done to minimize soil pollution with trace metals, as well as to amend those soils that are already polluted. This study was conducted aiming to determine the efficiency of three binding agents on the immobilization of Cd in three soil types collected from Karanganyar. Soil samples were collected from the topsoil (30 cm) and analyzed in the laboratory for pH, SOM, CTC, soil texture and initial Cd content before treatment. The experimental design was Completely Randomized (3 soil types; 3 adsorbents; 3 replications), and incubated for 24 days in the laboratory. After incubation, pH and Cd content were measured and ANOVA and Tukey’s test were performed. The results showed that Dolomite was the best binding agent on immobilization of Cd (95.45%) in each soil, followed by organic fertilizer (92.64%) and charcoal (91.53%). However, in general, all the binding agents showed remarkable efficiency on Cd immobilization in the three soil types. To sum up, this research may positively boost agricultural systems, which is determinant for sustainable development, in particular in developing countries worldwide. In addition, the outcomes may have a great impact on the reduction of soil pollution with agrochemicals and heavy metals. On the other hand, there is a potential to keep and restore ecological sustainability. Apart from this, also could minimize to some extent, climate change and global warming issues through multi-planting strategies, while significantly contributing to achieving food security and economic stability, as well as addressing poverty issues in rural areas.
Novel Centrally Loaded Resonators and Their Applications to Bandpass Filters

This paper presents several novel centrally loaded resonators and their applications to various types of bandpass filters. Based on the theoretical analysis, it is found that the even- mode resonance of the proposed resonators can be conveniently controlled without affecting the responses at the odd-mode resonant frequencies. Benefiting from this feature, the resonator can be utilized to design not only harmonic-suppressed bandpass filters and dual-band bandpass filters but also tunable bandpass filters. The tunable filter offers a fixed passband and a tunable one. The center frequency of the upper passband can be electrically tuned, whereas the performance of the lower one is maintained constant. To demonstrate these applications, four filters using the proposed resonators are implemented. The experiments verify the theoretical predictions and simulations.
To compare the efficacy of plasma glucose level, finger capillary blood, and gingival crevicular blood to measure blood glucose level in chronic periodontitis patients

Background: A high number of patients with Periodontitis may have undiagnosed diabetes mellitus (DM). Diabetes is an associated risk factor for chronic periodontitis and has several other oral symptoms including dry mouth and oral infection. Expanding the role of the dentist may prove to be an efficient method of early detection and management of diabetes. Aim: The purpose of the present study was to evaluate whether blood oozing from gingival crevice during routine periodontal examinztion can be used for determining glucose levels. Materials and Methods: A total of 120 male/female patients with Chronic Periodontitis in the age group of 30 years and above were selected and divided into three groups i.e. Control Group (Plasma glucose level), Test Group 1 (Finger capillary blood) and Test Group 2 (Gingival crevicular blood). Blood glucose measurements were made using gingival crevicular blood and finger capillary blood using glucose self monitoring device (Accu-Chek Active) and at the same time venous blood was collected for measurement of serum (plasma) glucose. Data obtained were statistically analyzed using Paired t-test (p), and Pearson's correlation test (r). Results: The results revealed a strong correlation between (a) gingival crevicular blood and finger capillary blood (r = 0.999; P < 0.133); and also (b) between GCB and Plasma glucose level (r =0.984; P < 0.230). Conclusion: The data from this study has shown that gingival crevicular blood collected during diagnostic periodontal examination can be an excellent source of blood for glucometric analysis. GCB can be used as a marker for blood glucose estimation using glucometer. The technique described is safe, easy to perform and helps to increase the frequency of diabetes screening in dental office.
Orthogonal Matching Pursuit with Noisy and Missing Data: Low and High Dimensional Results

Many models for sparse regression typically assume that the covariates are known completely, and without noise. Particularly in high-dimensional applications, this is often not the case. This paper develops efficient OMP-like algorithms to deal with precisely this setting. Our algorithms are as efficient as OMP, and improve on the best-known results for missing and noisy data in regression, both in the high-dimensional setting where we seek to recover a sparse vector from only a few measurements, and in the classical low-dimensional setting where we recover an unstructured regressor. In the high-dimensional setting, our support-recovery algorithm requires no knowledge of even the statistics of the noise. Along the way, we also obtain improved performance guarantees for OMP for the standard sparse regression problem with Gaussian noise.
The redshift‐space power spectrum in the halo model

Recently there has been a lot of attention focused on a virialized halo-based approach to understanding the properties of the matter and galaxy power spectrum. We show that this model allows a natural treatment of the large- and small-scale redshift-space distortions, which we develop here, which extends the pedagogical value of the approach.
A Novel Feature Extraction Algorithm for Outdoor Mobile Robot Localization

Navigation is one of the basic problems for autonomous mobile robots. Its history can be traced back to long time ago. Today, navigation is a well-understood quantitative science, used routinely in maritime and aviation applications [Adams, 1999]. Given this, the question must be asked as to why robust and reliable autonomous mobile robot navigation remains such a difficult problem. The core of the problem is the reliable acquisition or extraction of information about navigation beacons from sensor information and the automatic correlation or correspondence of these with some navigation map [Guivant et al., 2000]. Many navigation systems use artificial beacons to realize their navigation task, but the approach may not be realistic in applications such as exploration of jungles or other unknown environments. In this situation, one needs to utilize naturally occurring structure of typical environments to achieve a similar performance. Hence, fast and reliable algorithms capable of extracting features from a large set of noisy data are important in such applications. Some of the early efforts in this direction have focused on extracting line features in an indoor environment based on the information provided by sonar and laser sensors. In [Crowley, 1985], a least-squares line fitting technique was applied to extract edges from ultrasonic sensor data. In [Taylor & Probert, 1996], a recursive line fitting system is used to extract line segments under polar coordinates and an ellipse fitting method is also implemented for data from a laser sensor. In [Vandorpe et al., 1996], line segments are detected using a regression least-squares parameter estimation method whereas the center and radius of a circle feature are estimated based on the average value of the measurements of the circle from a 2D range scanner. Later, a two-layer Kalman filter was used to calculate the parameters of a line by an on-line method in [Roumeliotis & Bekey, 2000]. Observe that the aforementioned articles are focused on indoor applications and are mainly concerned with line extraction. For an outdoor environment, the problem of feature selection and detection is more challenging. In our view, in most typical semi-structured outdoor environments, such as campuses, parks and suburbs, tree trunks and tree-like objects, such as pillars, are relatively stable, regular and naturally occurring features that can provide very useful information for mobile robot navigation. Recently, some research on the use of these kinds of geometrical features has been carried out in [Guivant et al., 2002]. Also, [Guivant et al., 2002; Bailey, 2002] addressed the problem of extracting tree trunks from laser scan data where the centre and radius of a circle are estimated by averaging the measurements. This method can be
Blastoid variants of mantle cell lymphoma: frequent bcl-1 rearrangements at the major translocation cluster region and tetraploid chromosome clones.

Sixty-four cases of mantle cell (centrocytic) non-Hodgkin's lymphomas have been analyzed for their cytomorphologic features, proliferation indices, bcl-1 rearrangements, p53 expression patterns, and DNA content by both interphase cytogenetic and DNA flow cytometric analyses. According to cytomorphology, three subtypes were recognized: a common, a lymphoblastoid, and a pleomorphic variant of mantle cell lymphoma (MCL). Blastoid MCL subtypes were characterized by distinctly elevated mitotic counts (57 and 51/10 HPF v 21/10 high-power fields in common MCL), proliferation indices (58% and 53% v 27% in common types, respectively; P < .001), frequent bcl-1 rearrangements at the major translocation cluster locus (59% v 40%), and overexpression of p53 (21% v 6%). However, the most interesting finding was a striking tendency of blastoid MCL subtypes to harbor chromosome numbers in the tetraploid range (36% of lymphoblastoid and 80% of pleomorphic types v 8% of common variants, P < .001), a feature clearly separating these neoplasms from other types of B-cell non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and possibly being related to cyclin D1 overexpression. Our data indicate that, although characterized by a uniform immunophenotype and common biologic background, MCL shows a broad spectrum of morphologic features ranging from small cell to blastoid types and that the morphologic spectrum is mirrored by distinct biologic features.
Dysregulation of Corticostriatal Connectivity in Huntington’s Disease: A Role for Dopamine Modulation

Aberrant communication between striatum, the main information processing unit of the basal ganglia, and cerebral cortex plays a critical role in the emergence of Huntington’s disease (HD), a fatal monogenetic condition that typically strikes in the prime of life. Although both striatum and cortex undergo substantial cell loss over the course of HD, corticostriatal circuits become dysfunctional long before neurons die. Understanding the dysfunction is key to developing effective strategies for treating a progressively worsening triad of motor, cognitive, and psychiatric symptoms. Cortical output neurons drive striatal activity through the release of glutamate, an excitatory amino acid. Striatal outputs, in turn, release γ-amino butyric acid (GABA) and exert inhibitory control over downstream basal ganglia targets. Ample evidence from transgenic rodent models points to dysregulation of corticostriatal glutamate transmission along with corresponding changes in striatal GABA release as underlying factors in the HD behavioral phenotype. Another contributor is dysregulation of dopamine (DA), a modulator of both glutamate and GABA transmission. In fact, pharmacological manipulation of DA is the only currently available treatment for HD symptoms. Here, we review data from animal models and human patients to evaluate the role of DA in HD, including DA interactions with glutamate and GABA within the context of dysfunctional corticostriatal circuitry.
Endogenous Growth in Open Economies: A Survey of Major Results

Endogenous growth has set a new paradigm for macroeconomic analysis. This paper overviews the most relevant theoretical contributions of this literature for the analysis of open economies, highlighting their implications both for the effects of crosscountry integration on output convergence and for the overall growth performance of the integrated economy, as compared to that of an identical group of autarchic countries. The literature is divided into three major classes, studying, respectively, the effects of factor mobility, the role of international trade, and the consequences of technology diffusion. The main conclusion is that knowledge spillovers can go a long way in explaining the differences in growth performances across countries, but additional research is needed to completely understand the mechanisms driving their international diffusion.