Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
T-B cell interaction inhibits spontaneous apoptosis of mature lymphocytes in Bcl-2-deficient mice

Bcl-2 expression is tightly regulated during lymphocyte development. Mature lymphocytes in Bcl-2-deficient mice show accelerated spontaneous apoptosis in vivo and in vitro. Stimulation of Bcl-2-deficient lymphocytes by anti-CD3 antibody inhibited the spontaneous apoptosis not only in T cells but also in B cells. The rescue of B cells was dependent on the presence of T cells, mainly through CD40L and interleukin (IL)-4. Furthermore, we generated Bcl-2-deficient mice transgenic for a T cell receptor or an immunoglobulin, both specific for chicken ovalbumin, to test for antigen-specific T-B cell interaction in the inhibition of the spontaneous apoptosis. The initial T cell activation by antigenic peptides presented by B cells suppressed apoptosis in T cells. Subsequently, T cells expressed CD40L and released ILs, leading to the protection of B cells from spontaneous apoptosis. These results suggest that the antiapoptotic signaling via CD40 or IL-4 may be largely independent of Bcl-2. Engagement of the Ig alone was not sufficient for the inhibition of B cell apoptosis. Thus, the physiological role of Bcl-2 in mature lymphocytes may be to protect cells from spontaneous apoptosis and to extend their lifespans to increase the opportunity for T cells and B cells to interact with each other and specific antigens in secondary lymphoid tissues. Bcl-2, however, appears to be dispensable for survival once mature lymphocytes are activated by antigen-specific T-B cell collaboration.
Thyroid and Aging or the Aging Thyroid? An Evidence-Based Analysis of the Literature

Thyroid hormone production, metabolism, and action change with aging. The reference ranges for serum thyrotropin and thyroid hormones are derived mainly from younger populations. Thus, the prevalence of subclinical thyroid dysfunction is increased greatly in the elderly. However, it is unclear whether mild thyroid dysfunction in the elderly is associated with adverse outcomes. In this review, we discuss current evidence-based literature on thyroid function in the elderly and whether subclinical thyroid dysfunction in the elderly should be treated.
Phases of Imitation and Innovation in a North-South Endogenous Growth Model

In this paper, we develop a North-South endogenous growth model to examine three phases of development in the South: imitation of Northern products, imitation and innovation and finally, innovation only. In particular, the model has the features of catching up (and potentially overtaking) which are of particular relevance to the Pacific Rim economies. We show that the possible equilibria depend on cross-country assimilation effects and the ease of imitation. We then apply the model to analyse the impact of R&D subsidies. There are some clear global policy implications which emerge from our analysis. Firstly, because subsidies to Southern innovation benefit the North as well, it is beneficial to the North to pay for some of these subsidies. Secondly, because the ability of the South to assimilate Northern knowledge and innovate depends on Southern skills levels, the consequent spillover benefits on growth make the subsidising of Southern education by the North particularly attractive.
Similarity Search over DNS Query Streams for Email Worm Detection

Email worms and the high amount of unsolicited email traffic on the Internet continue to be persistent operational security issues. In this work, we present a method to detect email worms soon after they appear at the local name server, which is topologically near the infected machines. Our method analyses at flow level the communication patterns between user machines and the local name server. With respect to this, it uses exact similarity search over time series produced by the Domain Name System (DNS) query streams of user machines, and unsupervised learning. To evaluate our method, we have constructed and used a DNS query dataset that consists of 71 recent email worms. We demonstrate that our method is remarkably effective in the long run, and that time series similarity search can be a useful tool for intrusion detection, one that has not yet been adequately explored.
Nicotinic Receptors in the Habenulo-Interpeduncular System Are Necessary for Nicotine Withdrawal in Mice

In humans, tobacco withdrawal produces symptoms that contribute to the difficulty associated with smoking cessation. Nicotine withdrawal symptoms can also be observed in rodents. A major standing question is which nicotinic receptor subtypes and which areas of the brain are necessary for nicotine withdrawal to occur. Using knock-out mice, we previously showed that the β4, but not the β2 subunit of nicotinic acetylcholine receptors, is necessary for the somatic manifestations of nicotine withdrawal. Since the β4 subunit is highly expressed in the medial habenula, we focused our studies on the medial habenula and its primary target, the interpeduncular nucleus. In particular, we studied nicotine withdrawal in mice lacking the α2 or the α5 nicotinic receptor subunits, which are highly expressed in the interpeduncular nucleus. We precipitated withdrawal by systemically injecting the nicotinic antagonist mecamylamine in mice chronically treated with nicotine. Both the α2 and the α5 null mutations abolished the somatic manifestations of nicotine withdrawal. In addition, in wild-type mice chronically treated with nicotine, mecamylamine precipitated withdrawal when microinjected into the habenula or the interpeduncular nucleus, but not into the cortex, ventral tegmental area or hippocampus. Our results demonstrate a major role for the habenulo-interpeduncular system and the nicotinic receptor subunits expressed therein, in nicotine withdrawal symptoms. Our data suggest that the efforts to develop new smoking cessation therapies should concentrate on these areas and receptor types.
Who should teach? A Chinese teacher candidate’s understandings of a good teacher and racialised experiences

ABSTRACT Being a good teacher depends on many cultural and linguistic assumptions. Dominant definitions of a good teacher are often based on these implicit assumptions. Probing notions of a good teacher, we examine the endeavors of a Chinese international pre-service teacher, Ling, to become a “good teacher” through her encounters with micro-aggression in the context of her coursework and fieldwork at a U.S. university. The data presented here were collected through semi-structured interviews and field notes from 2014 to 2015 as part of a larger ethnographic case study. We find that the process of becoming a good teacher depends on many cultural and linguistic assumptions that are linked to micro-aggression. We conclude by reflecting on Ling’s understanding of a good teacher in light of dominant views on the matter and her ambivalence to speak up, and make recommendations for further research to allow for alternative views of good teachers to coexist.
Navigation of an autonomous mobile robot using intelligent hybrid technique

The hallmark of this paper describes Adaptive Neurofuzzy (ANFIS) based navigation for an autonomous mobile robot in a real world cluttered environment. ANFIS has the advantage of both expert knowledge of the fuzzy inference system and the supervised learning capability of artificial neural networks. In this architecture the front obstacle distance (FOD), left obstacle distance (LOD), right obstacle distance (ROD) (from the robot) and target angle (angle to the source) are collected from the array of ultrasonic sensors mounted on a mobile robot and given as input to the ANFIS controller and output from the controller is steering angle. Finally, simulation experiments using MATLAB program have shown that, the ANFIS model is suitable and effective for path planning of a mobile robot in uncertain terrain to find and reach to target objects.
Results of three to 10 year follow up of balloon dilatation of the pulmonary valve

Background The results of immediate and short term follow up of balloon dilatation of the pulmonary valve have been well documented, but there is limited information on long term follow up. Objective To evaluate the results of three to 10 year follow up of balloon dilatation of the pulmonary valve in children and adolescents. Setting Tertiary care centre/university hospital. Design Retrospective study. Methods and results 85 patients (aged between 1 day and 20 years, mean (SD) 7.0 (6.4) years) underwent balloon dilatation of the pulmonary valve during an 11 year period ending August 1994. There was a resultant reduction in the peak to peak gradient from 87 (38) to 26 (22) mm Hg. Immediate surgical intervention was not required. Residual gradients of 29 (17) mm Hg were measured by catheterisation (n = 47) and echo Doppler (n = 82) at intermediate term follow up (two years). When individual results were scrutinised, nine of 82 patients had restenosis, defined as a peak gradient of 50 mm Hg or more. Seven of these patients underwent repeat balloon dilatation of the pulmonary valve: peak gradients were reduced from 89 (40) to 38 (20) mm Hg. Clinical evaluation and echo Doppler data of 80 patients showed that residual peak instantaneous Doppler gradients were 17 (15) mm Hg at long term follow up (three to 10 years, median seven), with evidence for late restenosis in one patient (1.3%). Surgical intervention was necessary to relieve fixed infundibular stenosis in three patients and supravalvar pulmonary stenosis in one. Repeat balloon dilatation was performed to relieve restenosis in two patients. Actuarial reintervention free rates at one, two, five, and 10 years were 94%, 89%, 88%, and 84%, respectively. Pulmonary valve regurgitation was noted in 70 of 80 patients at late follow up, but neither right ventricular dilatation nor paradoxical interventricular septal motion developed. Conclusions The results of late follow up of balloon dilatation of the pulmonary valve are excellent. Repeat balloon dilatation was performed in 11% of patients and surgical intervention for subvalvlar or supravalvar stenosis in 5%. Most patients had mild residual pulmonary regurgitation but right ventricular volume overload did not develop and surgical intervention was not required. Balloon dilatation is the treatment of choice in the management of moderate to severe stenosis of the pulmonary valve. Further follow up studies should be undertaken to evaluate the significance of residual pulmonary regurgitation.
The Meaning of Adherence When Behavioral Risk Patterns Vary: Obscured Use- and Method-Effectiveness in HIV-Prevention Trials

Background Recently promising trials of innovative biomedical approaches to prevent HIV transmission have been reported. Participants' non-adherence to the prevention methods complicates the analyses and interpretation of trial results. The influence of variable sexual behaviors within and between participants of trials further obscures matters. Current methodological and statistical approaches in HIV-prevention studies, as well as ongoing debates on contradictory trial results, may fail to accurately address these topics. Methodology/Principal Findings Through developing a cumulative probability model of infection within HIV prevention trials, we demonstrate how adherence and sexual behavior patterns impact the overall estimate of effectiveness, the effectiveness of prevention methods as a function of adherence, and conclusions about methods' true effectiveness. Applying the model to summary-level data from the CAPRISA trial, we observe markedly different values for the true method effectiveness of the microbicide, and show that if the gel would have been tested among women with slightly different sexual behavior patterns, conclusions might well have been that the gel is not effective. Conclusions/Significance Relative risk and adherence analyses in HIV prevention trials overlook the complex interplay between adherence and sexual behavior patterns. Consequently, they may not provide accurate estimates of use- and method-effectiveness. Moreover, trial conclusions are contingent upon the predominant sexual behavior pattern of participants and cannot be directly generalized to other contexts. We recommend researchers to (re)examine their data and use the cumulative probability model to estimate the true method effectiveness, which might contribute to resolving current questions about contradictory trial results. Moreover, we suggest taking into account the issues raised in the design of future trials and in population models estimating the impact of large-scale dissemination of prevention methods. Comprehension of the topics described will help readers to better interpret (apparently contradictory) trial outcomes.
An atomistic simulation of the liquid-crystalline phases of sexithiophene

We have investigated, using atomistic molecular dynamics simulations, the high temperature molecular organization of the linear oligothiophene α-sexithienyl (T6), well known for its organic electronics applications. We have found a smectic and a nematic liquid crystalline phase in the same temperature range where they had been experimentally reported but not fully characterized. We have microscopically characterized the phases and connected the change of mesophase and of orientational and positional order to variations in the T6 conformation and effective shape. T6 phases obtained by rapid cooling from the ordered melts have also been simulated.
Promise of embedded system with GPU in artificial leg control: Enabling time-frequency feature extraction from electromyography

Applying electromyographic (EMG) signal pattern recognition to artificial leg control is challenging because leg EMGs are non-stationary. Time-frequency features are suitable for representing non-stationary signals; however, the computational complexity to extract time-frequency features is too high and current embedded systems used for artificial limb control are inadequate for real-time computing. The aim of this study was to quantify the computational speed of a novel embedded system, the Graphic Processor Unit (GPU), on EMG time-frequency feature extraction. The computational time derived from a GPU was compared to that derived from a general purpose CPU. The results indicated that the GPU significantly increased the computational speed. When the size of EMG analysis window was set to 100 ms, the GPU extracted EMG time-frequency features over 50 times faster than the CPU setting. Therefore, high performance GPU shows a great promise for EMG-controlled artificial legs and other medical applications that need high-speed and real-time computation.
A review of volunteered geographic information quality assessment methods

ABSTRACT With the ubiquity of advanced web technologies and location-sensing hand held devices, citizens regardless of their knowledge or expertise, are able to produce spatial information. This phenomenon is known as volunteered geographic information (VGI). During the past decade VGI has been used as a data source supporting a wide range of services, such as environmental monitoring, events reporting, human movement analysis, disaster management, etc. However, these volunteer-contributed data also come with varying quality. Reasons for this are: data is produced by heterogeneous contributors, using various technologies and tools, having different level of details and precision, serving heterogeneous purposes, and a lack of gatekeepers. Crowd-sourcing, social, and geographic approaches have been proposed and later followed to develop appropriate methods to assess the quality measures and indicators of VGI. In this article, we review various quality measures and indicators for selected types of VGI and existing quality assessment methods. As an outcome, the article presents a classification of VGI with current methods utilized to assess the quality of selected types of VGI. Through these findings, we introduce data mining as an additional approach for quality handling in VGI.
THE ROLE OF CONTAMINANT EXPOSURE AND HABITAT SUITABILITY IN NEST SITE USE AND PRODUCTIVITY OF OSPREYS (PANDION HALIAETUS) BREEDING ON THE DELAWARE RIVER AND BAY

Title of Thesis: THE ROLE OF CONTAMINANT EXPOSURE AND HABITAT SUITABILITY IN NEST SITE USE AND PRODUCTIVITY OF OSPREYS (PANDION HALIAETUS) BREEDING ON THE DELAWARE RIVER AND BAY Pamela C. Toschik, Master of Science, 2004 Thesis directed by: Professor Mary Ann Ottinger Department of Animal and Avian Sciences In 2002, contaminant exposure, reproduction, and habitat use of ospreys along 3 segments of a 300-km stretch of the Delaware Bay area, and a reference area were evaluated. Fresh eggs were collected and analyzed for contaminants; fate of nests was monitored through fledging. Concentrations of p,p’-DDE and PCBs in eggs collected between the C&D Canal and Trenton resembled elevated levels found in the Chesapeake Bay. Productivity for Inland Bays and southern Delaware Bay was 1.17 and 1.42 young fledged/active nest; north of the C&D Canal productivity averaged 1 fledgling/active nest. An examination of osprey habitat use showed that presence of active nests was associated with water depth and clarity, distance to active osprey nests, and presence of urban land, while hatching success was associated with organic contaminants in eggs. Contaminants continue to be a significant stressor on osprey productivity, particularly in the northern Delaware Bay area. THE ROLE OF CONTAMINANT EXPOSURE AND HABITAT SUITABILITY IN NEST SITE USE AND PRODUCTIVITY OF OSPREYS (PANDION HALIAETUS) BREEDING ON THE DELAWARE RIVER AND BAY
TSUNAMI GENERATION BY SUBMARINE MASS FAILURE PART I : WAVEMAKER MODELS

Numerical experiments are conducted for two-dimensional model problems of tsunami generation by underwater slides and slumps. These problems consist of a semi-ellipse, translating down an incline with a prescribed center of mass motion. For each problem, this motion is derived as a function of geometric and material parameters, and we calculate corresponding characteristic tsunami amplitudes. Landslide deformation is shown to have negligible effect on these amplitudes. Results of numerical experiments for the model problems are converted into predictive curve fits of characteristic tsunami amplitudes as functions of nondimensional governing parameters. Such results are useful for estimating tsunami hazard or for performing case studies. A method is proposed to input free surface displacements, modeled shortly after tsunami generation, into tsunami propagation models, in essence treating such submarine mass failures exactly like coseismic displacement.
Abundance Estimates of the Lesser Rhea Rhea pennata pennata in the Argentine Patagonia: Conservation Implications

The southern subspecies of the lesser rhea is distributed through the Argentine Patagonia and southern Chile. Habitat-loss and poaching were identified as the main threats to lesser rhea populations by the IUCN, which classified the species as ‘Least concern’ in 2014. Although Rhea pennata pennata is among the most conspicuous wildlife across the large Patagonian rangelands, the available estimates of abundance are scarce, mostly restricted to reports between 12 and 30 years old, and resulted from different surveying methods. Our purpose in this work was to obtain estimates of R. p. pennata abundance across different sites in the Argentine Patagonia, and to explore the main factors affecting the spatial variation in abundance. We surveyed over 4,000 km of line transects across six sites and obtained abundance estimates using the Distance sampling analysis. Also, we fitted restricted mixed models to evaluate the effects of different factors on the variation in R. p. pennata encounter rates among sites. We found that the abundance of R. p. pennata was very low either in the encounter rate (taking until 113 km of survey to detect a group of rheas depending on the site) or population density (between 0.0063 and 0.28 individuals.km-2). The occurrence of sheep ranching affected negatively the variation in the abundance of R. p. pennata among sites, whereas the availability of grassland habitat increased the chance of finding groups during the surveys. Line-transect surveys following the Distance sampling procedures are adequate to estimate encounter rates, although the low number of observations requires repeated surveys per site to obtain reliable estimates of animal density. Extended and sustained survey efforts and the implementation of a monitoring program are crucial to assess population trends of lesser rheas. Law enforcement to control poaching, increase in public awareness and an action plan to reduce threats are all necessary steps to conserve this emblematic species in Patagonia.
A statistical enquiry into the effect of test length on a math gender gap

This study researches whether girls are advantaged (vis-a-vis boys) as math test length increases. The meta-analysis on trends in gender and mathematics performance done by Lindberg, Hyde, Petersen & Linn (2010), was extended with variables on test length to obtain the final dataset for analysis. This contains 435 studies, in which 1,277,598 subjects are included. Proxies for test length are the number of questions and maximum time allowed in the studies. Small negative coefficients for both length measures are found when regressing test lengths on the standardized score difference, in the range of -. 0007 to -. 0022. The full regression model including test and student background controls and weighted observations estimates a negative coefficient of -. 002 (p<0.05) for the number of questions and -. 002 (p=0.15) for the maximum amount of minutes on a standardized difference. These findings indicate performance bias may be a threat for tests as an evaluation mechanism. However, further sensitivity analyses yields mixed results. Combined with the explorative character of this thesis the need for further research to test the hypothesis of gender bias with increasing test length is evident.
List Decoding for Arbitrarily Varying Multiple Access Channel Revisited: List Configuration and Symmetrizability

In a recent work, S. Nitinawarat obtained a lower bound and an upper bound for the minimum list size in list decoding for an arbitrarily varying multiple access channel (AVMAC), for which the interior of the capacity region of deterministic list codes is nonempty. In the same paper, he proved that for a binary AVMAC, the minimum list size is finite, if and only if the interior of the capacity region of random correlated codes is nonempty. The goal of this paper is to close the gap between the two bounds for the minimum list size. We find a necessary and sufficient condition for the list codes for an AVMAC to have a capacity region with a nonempty interior in terms of bipartite graphs. Therefore, we determine the minimum list size. Moreover, we prove that for any AVMAC, the minimum list size is finite, if and only if the interior of the capacity region of random correlated codes is nonempty.
Interval observer approach to output stabilization of time-varying input delay systems

The output stabilization problem for a linear system with an unknown time-varying bounded input delay is considered. The interval observer technique is applied in order to obtain guaranteed interval estimates of the system state. The procedure of the interval observer design, which is based on resolving of the Sylvester's equation, is discussed. Interval predictor is introduced and applied for a linear output stabilizing feedback design. The design procedure is based on Linear Matrix Inequalities (LMI). The theoretical results are supported by numerical simulations.