Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Successful respiratory immunization with dry powder live-attenuated measles virus vaccine in rhesus macaques

Measles remains an important cause of childhood mortality worldwide. Sustained high vaccination coverage is the key to preventing measles deaths. Because measles vaccine is delivered by injection, hurdles to high coverage include the need for trained medical personnel and a cold chain, waste of vaccine in multidose vials and risks associated with needle use and disposal. Respiratory vaccine delivery could lower these barriers and facilitate sustained high coverage. We developed a novel single unit dose, dry powder live-attenuated measles vaccine (MVDP) for respiratory delivery without reconstitution. We tested the immunogenicity and protective efficacy in rhesus macaques of one dose of MVDP delivered either with a mask or directly intranasal with two dry powder inhalers, PuffHaler and BD Solovent. MVDP induced robust measles virus (MeV)-specific humoral and T-cell responses, without adverse effects, which completely protected the macaques from infection with wild-type MeV more than one year later. Respiratory delivery of MVDP was safe and effective and could aid in measles control.
Hypoxic tumor-derived microvesicles negatively regulate NK cell function by a mechanism involving TGF-β and miR23a transfer

ABSTRACT Tumor-derived microvesicles (TD-MVs) are key mediators which are shed by cancer cells and can sensitize neighboring cells in the tumor microenvironment. TD-MVs are extracellular vesicles composed of exosomes and MVs and promote cancer invasion and metastasis. Intratumoral hypoxia is an integral component of all solid tumors. The relationship between hypoxic tumor-shed MVs and NK-mediated cytotoxicity remains unknown. In this paper, we reported that MVs derived from hypoxic tumor cells qualitatively differ from those derived from normoxic tumor cells. Using multiple tumor models, we showed that hypoxic MVs inhibit more NK cell function as compared to normoxic MVs. Hypoxic TD-MVs package two immunosuppressive factors involved in the impairment of natural killer (NK) cell cytotoxicity against different tumor cells in vitro and in vivo. We showed that following their uptake by NK cells, hypoxic TD-MVs transfer TGF-β1 to NK cells, decreasing the cell surface expression of the activating receptor NKG2D, thereby inhibiting NK cell function. MicroRNA profiling revealed the presence of high levels of miR-210 and miR-23a in hypoxic TD-MVs. We demonstrated that miR-23a in hypoxic TD-MVs operates as an additional immunomosuppressive factor, since it directly targets the expression of CD107a in NK cells. To our knowledge, this is the first study to show that hypoxic tumor cells by secreting MVs can educate NK cells and decrease their antitumor immune response. This study highlights the existence of a novel mechanism of immune suppression mediated by hypoxic TD-MVs and further improves our understanding of the immunosuppressive mechanisms prevailing in the hypoxic tumor microenvironment.
AES Encryption Implementation on CUDA GPU and Its Analysis

GPU has a good performance ratio and exhibits the capability for applications with high level of parallelism despite its inexpensive price. The support of integer and logical instructions on the latest generation of GPU makes us to implement cipher algorithms easier with the same instructions. However the decisions such as parallel processing granularity or memory allocation place imposed heavy burden on programmers. For this reason this paper shows the results of several experiments to study relation between memory allocation style of AES parameters and granularity as the parallelism exploited from AES encoding process using CUDA with NVIDIA Geforce GTX285. The result of experiments cleared up that the 16Byte/thread granularity had the highest performance and it achieved approximately 35Gbps throughput. Moreover, implementation with overlapping between processing and data transfer brought up 22.5Gbps throughput including data transfer time. Also, it cleared up that it is important to decide granularity and memory allocation to effective processing in AES encryption on GPU.
Serious about leisure, serious about destinations: mountain bikers and destination attractiveness

ABSTRACT Despite the relevance of the concept of serious leisure to the study of certain types of sports participants, little is known about the relevance of the serious leisure framework to the study of destination preferences. This paper outlines the findings of a qualitative study of “serious” mountain bikers in New Zealand. In-depth interviews were used to determine the attractiveness of certain destinations to mountain bikers whose devotion to the sport conforms to the notion of serious leisure. Travel to tourism destinations helps mountains bikers pursue serious participation in mountain biking. Reciprocally, destinations are assessed by serious mountain bikers on the basis of their ability to advance participants’ degree of seriousness. Therefore, this study suggests that the serious leisure framework can enhance understanding of destination preferences in sport tourism as well as provide management and marketing professionals with insight regarding destination development and promotional strategies. Implications for practitioners are discussed. This paper aims to make a scholarly contribution by exploring specific connections amongst serious leisure, sport tourist behaviour and destination preference.
Cerebral blood flow autoregulation is preserved after continuous-flow left ventricular assist device implantation.

OBJECTIVE To compare cerebral blood flow (CBF) autoregulation in patients undergoing continuous-flow left ventricular assist device (LVAD) implantation with that in patients undergoing coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG). DESIGN Prospective, observational, controlled study. SETTING Academic medical center. PARTICIPANTS Fifteen patients undergoing LVAD insertion and 10 patients undergoing CABG. MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS Cerebral autoregulation was monitored with transcranial Doppler and near-infrared spectroscopy. A continuous Pearson correlation coefficient was calculated between mean arterial pressure (MAP) and CBF velocity and between MAP and near-infrared spectroscopic data, rendering the variables mean velocity index (Mx) and cerebral oximetry index (COx), respectively. Mx and COx approach 0 when autoregulation is intact (no correlation between CBF and MAP), but approach 1 when autoregulation is impaired. Mx was lower during and immediately after cardiopulmonary bypass in the LVAD group than in the CABG group, indicating better-preserved autoregulation. Based on COx monitoring, autoregulation tended to be better preserved in the LVAD group than in the CABG group immediately after surgery (p = 0.0906). On postoperative day 1, COx was lower in the LVAD group than in the CABG group, indicating preserved CBF autoregulation (p = 0.0410). Based on COx monitoring, 3 patients (30%) in the CABG group had abnormal autoregulation (COx ≥0.3) on the first postoperative day but no patient in the LVAD group had this abnormality (p = 0.037). CONCLUSIONS These data suggest that CBF autoregulation is preserved during and immediately after surgery in patients undergoing LVAD insertion.
A Development Dilemma for Secondary Vocational Education

Human resource development is one of the theories guiding China's development of secondary vocational education. Secondary vocational education has always played a role in human resource training and development from the nation's founding to the present. In Chinese society today, however, there is a clear instrumentalist tendency in secondary vocational education's focus on human resource development, which has become a dilemma constraining the development of secondary vocational education. Our empirical study in the city of Dalian found that such an instrumentalist talent development trend appears primarily in the following areas: employment-oriented training models, interest-driven school management, and local conservatism in development planning.
Impact of smoking status on early and late outcomes after isolated aortic valve replacement surgery.

BACKGROUND AND AIM OF THE STUDY Currently, insufficient data exist relating to the impact of smoking status on outcomes after isolated aortic valve replacement (AVR) surgery. METHODS Data obtained prospectively between June 2001 and December 2009 by the Australian and New Zealand Society of Cardiac and Thoracic Surgeons (SCTS) Cardiac Surgery Database Program was analyzed retrospectively. Demographic and operative data were compared between patients who were non-smokers, previous smokers and current smokers, using chi-square and t-tests. The independent impact of smoking status on 14 short-term complications and long-term mortality was determined using binary logistic and Cox regression, respectively. RESULTS Isolated AVR surgery was performed in 2,790 patients; smoking status was recorded in 2,784 cases (99.8%). Of these patients 1,346 (48.3%) had no previous smoking history, 1,232 (44.3%) were previous smokers, and 206 (7.4%) were current smokers. The 30-day mortality rate was 2.3% in nonsmokers, 2.7% in previous smokers, and 0.5% in current smokers (p = NS). The incidence of perioperative complications was generally similar in the three groups, but current smokers were at an increased risk of pneumonia (p = 0.030) and postoperative myocardila infarction (p = 0.007). The mean follow up period for the study was 37 months (range: 0-105 months). After adjusting for differences in patient variables, the incidence of late mortality was not higher in previous smokers (HR 1.13; 95% CI 0.87-1.46; p = 0.372) or current smokers (HR 1.25; 95% CI 0.66-2.36; p = 0.494) compared to non-smokers. CONCLUSION Smoking status does not necessarily portend a poorer perioperative outcome in patients undergoing isolated AVR.
Chapters School of Hotel Administration Collection 8-24-2010 On the Capital Structure of Real Estate Firms

The leverage and debt maturity choices of real estate companies are interdependent, and are not made separately as is often assumed in the literature. We use three-stage least squares (3SLS) regression analysis to explore this interdependence for a sample of listed U.S. real estate companies and Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) traded between 1973 and 2006.We find substantial differences in the nature of the relationship between leverage and maturity for the two firm types. Leverage is a determinant of maturity for non-REITs, whereas maturity is a determinant of leverage for REITs. We also find that the drivers of capital structure choices in real estate companies and REITs clearly reflect the effects of the REIT regulation.
Comparison of Dissociation-Enhanced Lanthanide Fluorescent Immunoassays to Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assays for Detection of Staphylococcal Enterotoxin B, Yersinia pestis-Specific F1 Antigen, and Venezuelan Equine Encephalitis Virus

ABSTRACT The dissociation-enhanced lanthanide fluorescent immunoassays (DELFIA) were developed for the detection of staphylococcal enterotoxin B, Yersinia pestis-specific F1 antigen, and Venezuelan equine encephalitis virus. These assays were compared to previously developed enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (ELISAs) by determining the sensitivity or limit of detection (LOD), the dynamic range, and the reproducibility of each assay in a number of different sample matrices. The sensitivity and specificity of each assay were then determined by using a small panel of blinded spiked and nonspiked samples. All three DELFIAs demonstrated at least 1 log greater sensitivity than corresponding ELISAs utilizing the same reagents and showed an increase in dynamic range of at least 2 log10 concentrations. This increased LOD resulted in higher sensitivity rates for the DELFIA. The specificity of all of the assays evaluated was 100%, and no sample matrix effects were observed in either format. However, the reproducibility of the DELFIA was poor due to randomly distributed wells exhibiting excessive background signal (hot wells), which occurred throughout the evaluation. As this technology matures, the reproducibility of these assays should improve, as will the ability to identify hot wells. Despite its sensitivity, the logistical burden associated with the DELFIA and the technical expertise required to complete assays and interpret the data limit the application of this technology to reference or large clinical laboratories.
Abstraction of Conditional Term Rewriting Systems

This paper introduces the notion of abstract domains for constructor-based conditional term rewriting systems and deenes the notion of abstract term rewriting systems (abstract TRS) over these domains. These new term rewriting systems are mainly used to determine or to approximate the normal forms of ground instances of concrete terms (with variables). We propose a method to compute such an abstract TRS as the least xed point of a transformation over abstract TRS's. The computed abstract TRS allows to determine eeciently an approximation of any concrete term. Among the possible applications of the introduced concepts, we quote: improvement of the implementation of functional-logic programming languages, E-uniication, satissability, proofs by induction, etc.
Benchmarking the Extraction and Disambiguation of Named Entities on the Semantic Web

Named entity recognition and disambiguation are of primary importance for extracting information and for populating knowledge bases. Detecting and classifying named entities has traditionally been taken on by the natural language processing community, whilst linking of entities to external resources, such as those in DBpedia, has been tackled by the Semantic Web community. As these tasks are treated in different communities, there is as yet no oversight on the performance of these tasks combined. We present an approach that combines the state-of-the art from named entity recognition in the natural language processing domain and named entity linking from the semantic web community. We report on experiments and results to gain more insights into the strengths and limitations of current approaches on these tasks. Our approach relies on the numerous web extractors supported by the NERD framework, which we combine with a machine learning algorithm to optimize recognition and linking of named entities. We test our approach on four standard data sets that are composed of two diverse text types, namely newswire and microposts.
Predicting Online Performance of News Recommender Systems Through Richer Evaluation Metrics

We investigate how metrics that can be measured offline can be used to predict the online performance of recommender systems, thus avoiding costly A-B testing. In addition to accuracy metrics, we combine diversity, coverage, and serendipity metrics to create a new performance model. Using the model, we quantify the trade-off between different metrics and propose to use it to tune the parameters of recommender algorithms without the need for online testing. Another application for the model is a self-adjusting algorithm blend that optimizes a recommender's parameters over time. We evaluate our findings on data and experiments from news websites.
Transformational adaptation when incremental adaptations to climate change are insufficient

All human–environment systems adapt to climate and its natural variation. Adaptation to human-induced change in climate has largely been envisioned as increments of these adaptations intended to avoid disruptions of systems at their current locations. In some places, for some systems, however, vulnerabilities and risks may be so sizeable that they require transformational rather than incremental adaptations. Three classes of transformational adaptations are those that are adopted at a much larger scale, that are truly new to a particular region or resource system, and that transform places and shift locations. We illustrate these with examples drawn from Africa, Europe, and North America. Two conditions set the stage for transformational adaptation to climate change: large vulnerability in certain regions, populations, or resource systems; and severe climate change that overwhelms even robust human use systems. However, anticipatory transformational adaptation may be difficult to implement because of uncertainties about climate change risks and adaptation benefits, the high costs of transformational actions, and institutional and behavioral actions that tend to maintain existing resource systems and policies. Implementing transformational adaptation requires effort to initiate it and then to sustain the effort over time. In initiating transformational adaptation focusing events and multiple stresses are important, combined with local leadership. In sustaining transformational adaptation, it seems likely that supportive social contexts and the availability of acceptable options and resources for actions are key enabling factors. Early steps would include incorporating transformation adaptation into risk management and initiating research to expand the menu of innovative transformational adaptations.
Persistent Insomnia in Chronic Hypnotic Users Presenting to a Sleep Medical Center: A Retrospective Chart Review of 137 Consecutive Patients

Chronic insomnia patients may fail pharmacotherapy. We reviewed charts on 137 chronic insomnia patients new to our sleep medical center who reported persisting insomnia despite long-term usage of pharmacotherapy. We examined 4 areas: (1) patient views on encounters with prescribing physicians; (2) self-reported medication efficacy; (3) treatment-seeking goals; and (4) completion of a sleep medicine workup. Insomnia chronicity averaged 13 years; use of prescription medication for sleep averaged 3.81 years. Encounters with prescribing physicians yielded few options beyond drugs. Drug efficacy was not optimal for most of these patients. Sleeping better or drug-free were their chief goals. Subjective and objective sleep measures confirmed moderately severe residual insomnia as well as fair to poor waking impairment and quality of life. Sleep workup revealed high rates of maladaptive behavioral influences (96%), psychiatric complaints (89%), and obstructive sleep apnea (71%). In chronic insomnia patients who failed pharmacotherapy, comorbid mental and physical factors indicated a sleep disturbance complexity unlikely to respond fully to medication.
Vocal performance influences male receiver response in the banded wren

In a variety of songbirds the production of trilled song elements is constrained by a performance tradeoff between how fast a bird can repeat trill units (trill rate) and the range of frequencies each unit can span (frequency bandwidth). High-performance trills serve as an assessment signal for females, but little is known about the signal value of vocal performance for male receivers. We investigated the relationship between trill rate and frequency bandwidth in banded wren (Thryothorus pleurostictus) songs. Trilled song elements showed the same performance tradeoff found in other passerines and individuals differed in performance of some trill types. We tested the hypothesis that males of this species assess each other based on trill performance with a two-speaker experiment, in which territory owners were presented with alternating renditions of the same song type manipulated to differ in trill rate. Subjects were significantly more likely to approach the faster trill stimulus first. However, subjects that received trill types closer to the performance limit spent less time close to the fast speaker. Our results show that male banded wrens discriminate and respond differently to songs based on their vocal performance. Thus, performance of physically challenging songs may be important in intra- as well as inter-sexual assessment.
Religion and attitudes toward the environment

This essay is an attempt to expand a study reported in 1989 of the relationship between religion and concern for the environment in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Here, only one variable was used, willingness to spend money on the environment, but findings were based on a national data set. Low levels of environmental concern correlate with a biblical literalism. They also correlate with being Christian and with confidence in the existence of God. On the other hand, support for environmental spending correlates positively with a gracious image of God and with being catholic. However, explanatory models suggest that it is not biblical literalism as such which relates to lack of environmental concern, but rather a rigid political and religious story
A new text statistical measure and its application to stylometry

We de(cid:28)ne a simple, purely surface frequency based measure S ( T, t ) which quanti(cid:28)es the similarity of a training text T with a test text t . S can be decomposed into three factors: one depending on the training text, one depending on the test text, and one nearly constant residual factor. The slight variations of this near constant allow us to measure stylistic di(cid:27)erences between T and t with high accuracy. The de(cid:28)ned quantity S is unique among other stylometric measures in that it uses the full frequency information of all substrings in both texts. Its applicability for stylometric classi(cid:28)cations was tested in a variety of experiments.
Healthful Employment: Hawthorne, Thoreau, and Middle-Class Fitness

I long to get into the country; for my health, latterly, is not quite what it has been, for many years past. I should not long stand such a life of bodily inactivity and mental exertion as I have led for the last few months. An hour or two of daily labor in a garden, and a daily ramble in country air or on the seashore, would keep all right. Do not allude to this matter in your letters to me; as my wife already sermonizes me quite sufficiently on my habits-and I never own up to not feeling perfectly well. Neither do I feel anywhere ill, but only a lack of physical vigor and energy, which re-acts upon the mind. '
A matter of degree: A justice framework for penal legitimacy

Discussion on legitimacy has highlighted its dialogic nature. The diversity of stakeholders in the penal system implies that penal policies and practices should be justifiable both internally (to offenders) and externally (to society at large). While most studies have focused on the internal aspect of penal legitimacy – the justification of authority through offenders’ perspectives – this paper calls for attention to the external stakeholders’ demands. Consequently, it becomes relevant to envisage ways of balancing between the conflicting standpoints of offenders and society at large regarding the justifications of penal power. For this purpose, this paper builds on Sen’s justice framework, whereby the best way to enhance justice is to avoid debating utopian ideals, and aims to apply its logic to the debate on penal legitimacy. It argues that it is not feasible to envisage a ‘legitimate prison’, and therefore it is better to focus on existing or possible alternatives of penal policies and practices. Since there are better and worse uses and justifications of penal power, legitimacy becomes a matter of degree. The reconciliation of conflicting views between preferable or less preferable uses and justifications of penal authority is suggested to be possible through exploring the potential of public debate.