Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Modeling Within-Host Dynamics of Influenza Virus Infection Including Immune Responses

Influenza virus infection remains a public health problem worldwide. The mechanisms underlying viral control during an uncomplicated influenza virus infection are not fully understood. Here, we developed a mathematical model including both innate and adaptive immune responses to study the within-host dynamics of equine influenza virus infection in horses. By comparing modeling predictions with both interferon and viral kinetic data, we examined the relative roles of target cell availability, and innate and adaptive immune responses in controlling the virus. Our results show that the rapid and substantial viral decline (about 2 to 4 logs within 1 day) after the peak can be explained by the killing of infected cells mediated by interferon activated cells, such as natural killer cells, during the innate immune response. After the viral load declines to a lower level, the loss of interferon-induced antiviral effect and an increased availability of target cells due to loss of the antiviral state can explain the observed short phase of viral plateau in which the viral level remains unchanged or even experiences a minor second peak in some animals. An adaptive immune response is needed in our model to explain the eventual viral clearance. This study provides a quantitative understanding of the biological factors that can explain the viral and interferon kinetics during a typical influenza virus infection.
Binary black hole merger in the extreme-mass-ratio limit

We discuss the transition from quasi-circular inspiral to plunge of a system of two nonrotating black holes of masses m1 and m2 in the extreme-mass-ratio limit m1m2 ≪ (m1 + m2)2. In the spirit of the effective one body (EOB) approach to the general relativistic dynamics of binary systems, the dynamics of the two black hole system is represented in terms of an effective particle of mass μ ≡ m1m2/(m1 + m2) moving in a (quasi-)Schwarzschild background of mass M ≡ m1 + m2 and submitted to an radiation reaction force defined by Padé resumming high-order post-Newtonian results. We then complete this approach by numerically computing, in the style of Regge–Wheeler–Zerilli, the gravitational radiation emitted by such a particle. Several tests of the numerical procedure are presented. We focus on gravitational waveforms and the related energy and angular momentum losses. We view this work as a contribution to the matching between analytical and numerical methods within an EOB-type framework.
Gender and Culture: International Experimental Evidence from Trust Games

This paper experimentally examines gender differences in bargaining using the 'trust game' introduced by Joyce Berg, John Dickhaut and Kevin McCabe (1995). We find no significant effect of gender on trusting behavior, but find that women reciprocate their partner's trust significantly more than men both in the US and internationally.
Evaluation of Local Media Surveillance for Improved Disease Recognition and Monitoring in Global Hotspot Regions

Digital disease detection tools are technologically sophisticated, but dependent on digital information, which for many areas suffering from high disease burdens is simply not an option. In areas where news is often reported in local media with no digital counterpart, integration of local news information with digital surveillance systems, such as HealthMap (Boston Children’s Hospital), is critical. Little research has been published in regards to the specific contribution of local health-related articles to digital surveillance systems. In response, the USAID PREDICT project implemented a local media surveillance (LMS) pilot study in partner countries to monitor disease events reported in print media. This research assessed the potential of LMS to enhance digital surveillance reach in five low- and middle-income countries. Over 16 weeks, select surveillance system attributes of LMS, such as simplicity, flexibility, acceptability, timeliness, and stability were evaluated to identify strengths and weaknesses in the surveillance method. Findings revealed that LMS filled gaps in digital surveillance network coverage by contributing valuable localized information on disease events to the global HealthMap database. A total of 87 health events were reported through the LMS pilot in the 16-week monitoring period, including 71 unique reports not found by the HealthMap digital detection tool. Furthermore, HealthMap identified an additional 236 health events outside of LMS. It was also observed that belief in the importance of the project and proper source selection from the participants was crucial to the success of this method. The timely identification of disease outbreaks near points of emergence and the recognition of risk factors associated with disease occurrence continue to be important components of any comprehensive surveillance system for monitoring disease activity across populations. The LMS method, with its minimal resource commitment, could be one tool used to address the information gaps seen in global ‘hot spot’ regions.
Fundamental limits of cache-aided wireless BC: Interplay of coded-caching and CSIT feedback

Building on the recent coded-caching breakthrough by Maddah-Ali and Niesen, the work here considers the K-user cache-aided wireless multi-antenna (MISO) symmetric broadcast channel (BC) with random fading and imperfect feedback, and analyzes the throughput performance as a function of feedback statistics and cache size. In this setting, our work identifies the optimal cache-aided degrees-of-freedom (DoF) within a factor of 4, by identifying near-optimal schemes that exploit the new synergy between coded caching and delayed CSIT, as well as by exploiting the unexplored interplay between caching and feedback-quality. The derived limits interestingly reveal that — the combination of imperfect quality current CSIT, delayed CSIT, and coded caching, guarantees that — the DoF gains have an initial offset defined by the current CSIT quality, and then that the additional gains attributed to coded caching are exponential, in the sense that any linear decrease in the required DoF performance, allows for an exponential reduction in the required cache size.
Viruses and apoptosis

Apoptosis, or programmed cell death, is essential in development and homeostasis in multi‐cellular organisms. It is also an important component of the cellular response to injury. Many cells undergo apoptosis in response to viral infection, with a consequent reduction in the release of progeny virus. Viruses have therefore evolved multiple distinct mechanisms for modulating host cell apoptosis. Viruses may interfere with either the highly conserved ‘effector’ mechanisms of programmed cell death or regulatory mechanisms specific to mammalian cells. In addition to conferring a selective advantage to the virus, the capacity to prevent apoptosis has an essential role in the transformation of the host cell by oncogenic viruses. This article provides a focussed review of apoptosis and illustrates how the study of viruses has informed our understanding of this process. Selected mechanisms by which viral gene products interfere with cell death are discussed in detail and used to illustrate the general principles of the interactions between viruses and apoptosis.
Facial skin resurfacing with a very short-pulsed CO2 laser: beam characterization and initial histological results

The beam characteristics and spot geometry of a short pulsed (15 - 1000 microsecond) carbon- dioxide, multimode laser were measured. At a distance of 1.0 - 3.0 cm from the handpiece the laser produced a 5 mm2 square spot with an even fluence across the entire spot area (Mesa Mode). Human eyelid skin was irradiated both in vivo and ex-vivo immediately after excision with 1, 2, 3, or 4 pulses, a pulse duration of 62.5 microseconds, and at a fluence of 6 J/cm2. H&E stained sections showed an even removal of tissue across the impact site. The depth of thermal damage was measured as 38 micrometer plus or minus 22.7 with a range of 0 - 100 micrometer.
Synthesis, Cytotoxicity and Molecular Docking Studies of the 9-Substituted 5-Styryltetrazolo[1,5-c]quinazoline Derivatives

In this paper, we describe the synthesis of the 5-styryltetrazolo[1,5-c]quinazolines substituted at the 9-position with a 4-fluorophenyl ring directly or via a conjugated π-spacer (C=C or C≡C bond) based on the 6-bromo-4-chloro-2-styrylquinazoline scaffold. The structures of the synthesized compounds were characterized based on a combination of 1H-NMR, 13C-NMR, IR and high resolution mass spectral data as well as microanalyses. The tetrazoloquinazolines were evaluated for potential in vitro cytotoxicity against the human breast adenocarcinoma (MCF-7) and cervical cancer (HeLa) cells. The anti-proliferative assays demonstrated that the 9-bromo-5-styryltetrazolo[1,5-c]quinazoline 3a and 9-bromo-5-(4-fluorostyryl)tetrazolo[1,5-c]quinazoline 3b exhibit significant cytotoxicity against both cell lines. A carbon-based substituent at the 9-position resulted in complete loss of cytotoxicity against both cell lines except for the 5,9-bis((E)-4-fluorostyryl)tetrazolo[1,5-c]quinazoline 4e, which was found to exhibit comparable cytotoxicity to that of Melphalan (IC50 = 61 μM) against the MCF-7 cell line with IC50 value of 62 μM. Molecular docking against tubulin (PDB:1TUB) showed that compounds 3a, 3b and 4e bind to the tubulin heterodimer. Binding involves hydrogen bonding for 3a and 3b and halogen interactions for 4e.
Prognostic Role and Significance of Paraneoplastic Syndromes in Hepatocellular Carcinoma

Patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) may develop paraneoplastic syndromes in the clinical course. These syndromes include hypercholesterolemia, hypoglycemia, hypercalcemia, and erythrocytosis, among others. This study was designed to assess the role of prognostic influence of paraneoplastic syndromes in patients with HCC. In a cohort of 175 patients with HCC patients, we compared the clinical features of patients with HCC with or without paraneoplastic syndromes. In addition, survival rates of patients with individual paraneoplastic syndromes and those without were also evaluated. Moreover, factors independently predicting prognosis among patients with HCC with or without paraneoplastic syndromes were analyzed. Among 175 patients with HCC, 54 patients presented paraneoplastic syndromes, and the prevalence was 30.9 per cent. There was no difference of clinical characteristics between patients with HCC with and without paraneoplastic syndromes on diagnosis. However, the patients with paraneoplastic syndromes had a significantly less survival rate comparing with those without during a 5-year follow-up. Cox regression analysis demonstrated that high Child-Pugh grade, large tumor size, portal vein tumor thrombosis, and distant metastasis were all independent unfavorable prognostic factors for survival of patients with HCC. Paraneoplastic syndromes as independent risk factors play a significant role in the progress of HCC and lead to poor prognosis in patients with HCC.
The clathrin endocytic pathway in viral infection

How important is the clathrin‐dependent endocytic pathway for entry of viruses into host cells? While it is widely accepted that Semliki Forest virus (SFV), an enveloped virus, requires this pathway there are conflicting data concerning the closely related Sindbis virus, as well as varying results with picornaviruses such as human rhinovirus 14 (HRV 14) and poliovirus. We have examined the entry mode of SFV, Sindbis virus, HRV 14 and poliovirus using a method that identifies single infected cells. This assay takes advantage of the observation that the clathrindependent endocytic pathway is specifically and potently arrested by overexpression of dynamin mutants that prevent clathrin‐coated pit budding. Using HeLa cells and conditions of low multiplicity of infection to favor use of the most avid pathway of cell entry, it was found that SFV, Sindbis virus and HRV 14 require an active clathrin‐dependent endocytic pathway for successful infection. In marked contrast, infection of HeLa cells by poliovirus did not appear to require the clathrin pathway.
Plasma and milk urea nitrogen in relation to pregnancy rate in lactating dairy cattle.

The objectives of this study were to relate concentrations of plasma (PUN) and milk (MUN) urea nitrogen to pregnancy rate in dairy cows and compare various methods of analysis and preparation of milk for measuring MUN. In two experiments, blood or milk samples were collected on the day of AI from Holstein cows (n = 160 and n = 155, respectively). Three methods of MUN analysis were compared. Two laboratory chemical procedures yielded similar results, whereas a quick dipstick method overestimated chemical analyses. Before and after milking strip samples had MUN concentrations equivalent to those in composite milk. Concentrations of PUN or MUN greater than 19 mg/dL were associated with decreased (P < .02) pregnancy rates (18 and 21 percentage point reduction in the two experiments). In two subset groups of cows (n = 51 and n = 23, respectively), plasma progesterone or MUN concentrations were monitored during the 5-d period after AI. Plasma progesterone concentrations increased similarly during the period for cows divided into low vs high PUN but were greater in pregnant than in nonpregnant cows on d 4 and 5 (P < .04). The MUN concentrations showed low within-cow variation (CV = 8%) but were lower in pregnant cows and had a decreasing trend over time compared with nonpregnant cows (P < .05). Based on this study, plasma and milk will yield similar results for monitoring urea nitrogen in dairy cows; PUN and MUN concentrations > 19 mg/dL were associated with approximately a 20 percentage point decrease in pregnancy rate after AI in lactating dairy cattle.
The circular law for random matrices

We consider the joint distribution of real and imaginary parts of eigenvalues of random matrices with independent real entries with mean zero and unit variance. We prove the convergence of this distribution to the uniform distribution on the unit disc without assumptions on the existence of a density for the distribution of entries. We assume that the entries have a finite moment of order larger than two and consider the case of sparse matrices. The results are based on previous work of Bai, Rudelson and the authors extending results to a larger class of sparse matrices.
The Attentional Drift-Diffusion Model Extends to Simple Purchasing Decisions

How do we make simple purchasing decisions (e.g., whether or not to buy a product at a given price)? Previous work has shown that the attentional drift-diffusion model (aDDM) can provide accurate quantitative descriptions of the psychometric data for binary and trinary value-based choices, and of how the choice process is guided by visual attention. Here we extend the aDDM to the case of purchasing decisions, and test it using an eye-tracking experiment. We find that the model also provides a reasonably accurate quantitative description of the relationship between choice, reaction time, and visual fixations using parameters that are very similar to those that best fit the previous data. The only critical difference is that the choice biases induced by the fixations are about half as big in purchasing decisions as in binary choices. This suggests that a similar computational process is used to make binary choices, trinary choices, and simple purchasing decisions.
Impaired Glucose Tolerance in a Mouse Model of Sidt2 Deficiency

Sidt2 was identified as a novel integral lysosomal membrane protein recently. We generated global Sidt2 knockout mice by gene targeting. These mice have a comparatively higher random and fasting glucose concentration. Intraperitoneal and oral glucose tolerance tests in Sidt2 knockout mice indicated glucose intolerance and decreased serum insulin level. Notably, the Sidt2−/− mice had hypertrophic islets compared with control mice. By Western blot and immunofluorescence, Sidt2−/− mouse islets were shown to have increased insulin protein, which actually contained more insulin secretory granules than their controls, demonstrated by electromicroscopy. Consistent with the in vivo study, isolated islet culture from the Sidt2−/− mice produced less insulin when stimulated by a high concentration of glucose or a depolarizing concentration of KCl. Under electromicroscope less empty vesicles and more mature ones in Sidt2−/− mice islets were observed, supporting impaired insulin secretory granule release. In conclusion, Sidt2 may play a critical role in the regulation of mouse insulin secretory granule secretion.
Combating Product Review Spam Campaigns via Multiple Heterogeneous Pairwise Features

Spam campaigns spotted in popular product review websites (e.g., amazon.com) have attracted mounting attention from both industry and academia, where a group of online posters are hired to collaboratively craft deceptive reviews for some target products. The goal is to manipulate perceived reputations of the targets for their best interests. Many efforts have been made to detect such colluders by extracting pointwise features from individual reviewers/reviewer-groups, however, pairwise features which can potentially capture the underlying correlations among colluders are either ignored or just explored insufficiently in the literature. We observed that pairwise features can be more robust to model the relationships among colluders since they, as the ingredients of spam campaigns, are correlated in nature. In this paper, we explore multiple heterogeneous pairwise features in virtue of some collusion signals found in reviewers’ rating behaviors and linguistic patterns. In addition, an unsupervised and intuitive colluder detecting framework has been proposed which can benefit from these pairwise features. Extensive experiments on real dataset show the effectiveness of our method and satisfactory superiority over several competitors.
A Mathematical Formulation of the Brittle/Ductile Transition of Impact Modified Polymers

The subject of this paper is the impact modification of polymers with elastomers via melt blending. A mathematical model was developed to account for the shape of the Izod S-curves (Izod values versus impact modifier content). Wu introduced the critical ligament thickness concept to explain the Brittle/Ductile Transition of polymers modified with elastomers: only when the ligament thickness (surface to surface distance of two rubber particles) is smaller than a critical value can the rubber particles promote toughness. In an ideal model with rubber particles distributed in an ordered lattice this transition would be a 90-degree step, whereas in practice this transition curve is more or less rounded. The smoothness of this transition is attributed in the present paper to the random distribution of rubber particles inside the polymer matrix: from this concept, an equation for the B/D Transition part of the S-curve was developed. This equation introduces the concept of the critical number of rubber particles, that is the number of particles within the ligament thickness distance necessary to trigger the toughness. The polymers investigated were polypropylene (PP) of different viscosity, polyamide (PA), polystyrene (PS), and polycarbonate (PC).
A Discriminated Release Strategy for Parking Variable Message Sign Display Problem Using Agent-Based Simulation

With the development and application of intelligent transportation systems (ITS), parking guidance and information system (PGIS) has become a hot topic for research and applications. Parking variable message sign (parking VMS) is the most common form of PGIS currently in use, particularly in providing the space availability information to en-route drivers. The aim of this study is to model drivers' responses to the parking VMSs under various parking information in a dynamical way. To ensure the guiding efficiency and assist drivers to identify parking lots with vacant spaces, the display strategies of parking VMS were studied. A discriminated release strategy with a space occupancy indicator (SOI) was then proposed to determine the display content on the parking VMS, in which an agent-based simulation was introduced to incorporate both parking choice model and traffic assignment algorithm dynamically. Guiding reliability and display strategies were further analyzed to attain a discriminated release strategy with SOI effectively. The results indicate that the guiding reliability was improved by reducing the SOI value of the corresponding parking lot, and the relatively uniform guiding reliabilities of all parking lots were attained by modifying SOI values iteratively. Additionally, the performance by incorporating the waiting time into the parking choice model was investigated and recommended. The discriminated release strategy presented in this study will assist in designing and operating urban PGIS.
Programming tutors, practiced concepts, and demographics

A study was conducted to find out who needed online problem-solving tutors and who benefited from using them. In particular, the study focused on whether there were any significant differences between male and female students and between traditionally represented and under-represented racial groups. Data collected by two Computer Science tutors over multiple semesters was analyzed. The only significant differences found between sexes and racial groups were when female students practiced significantly more concepts because they had solved significantly fewer problems during pre-test, or when they demonstrated greater pre-post increase in score because they had scored significantly less on the pre-test. In both the cases, the tutors helped female students overcome differences in prior preparation vis-a-vis male students. No difference was found between the sexes or racial groups on the number of practice problems solved per practiced concept. Finally, students needed and benefited from the tutors in the same proportion, regardless of sex or racial group.