Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Induction of Cell Cycle and NK Cell Responses by Live-Attenuated Oral Vaccines against Typhoid Fever

The mechanisms by which oral, live-attenuated vaccines protect against typhoid fever are poorly understood. Here, we analyze transcriptional responses after vaccination with Ty21a or vaccine candidate, M01ZH09. Alterations in response profiles were related to vaccine-induced immune responses and subsequent outcome after wild-type Salmonella Typhi challenge. Despite broad genetic similarity, we detected differences in transcriptional responses to each vaccine. Seven days after M01ZH09 vaccination, marked cell cycle activation was identified and associated with humoral immunogenicity. By contrast, vaccination with Ty21a was associated with NK cell activity and validated in peripheral blood mononuclear cell stimulation assays confirming superior induction of an NK cell response. Moreover, transcriptional signatures of amino acid metabolism in Ty21a recipients were associated with protection against infection, including increased incubation time and decreased severity. Our data provide detailed insight into molecular immune responses to typhoid vaccines, which could aid the rational design of improved oral, live-attenuated vaccines against enteric pathogens.
A Critical Role of the mTOR/eIF2α Pathway in Hypoxia-Induced Pulmonary Hypertension

Enhanced proliferation of pulmonary arterial vascular smooth muscle cells (PASMCs) is a key pathological component of vascular remodeling in hypoxia-induced pulmonary hypertension (HPH). Mammalian targeting of rapamycin (mTOR) signaling has been shown to play a role in protein translation and participate in the progression of pulmonary hypertension. Eukaryotic translation initiation factor-2α (eIF2α) is a key factor in regulation of cell growth and cell cycle, but its role in mTOR signaling and PASMCs proliferation remains unknown. Pulmonary hypertension (PH) rat model was established by hypoxia. Rapamycin was used to treat rats as an mTOR inhibitor. Proliferation of primarily cultured rat PASMCs was induced by hypoxia, rapamycin and siRNA of mTOR and eIF2α were used in loss-of-function studies. The expression and activation of eIF2α, mTOR and c-myc were analyzed. Results showed that mTOR/eIF2α signaling was significantly activated in pulmonary arteries from hypoxia exposed rats and PASMCs cultured under hypoxia condition. Treatment with mTOR inhibitor for 21 days attenuated vascular remodeling, suppressed mTOR and eIF2α activation, inhibited c-myc expression in HPH rats. In hypoxia-induced PASMCs, rapamycin and knockdown of mTOR and eIF2α by siRNA significantly abolished proliferation and increased c-myc expression. These results suggest a critical role of the mTOR/eIF2αpathway in hypoxic vascular remodeling and PASMCs proliferation of HPH.
Cultural Dimensions: a Factor Analysis of Textor's A Cross-Cultural Summary

Textor's A Cross-Cultural Summary is a computer-produced compilation of significant relationships between all the extant cross-cultural variables that were available at the time. Together with two coefficients of association (phi and chi-square) and levels of significance, the relationships are also expressed in verbal form. In order, however, to reduce these findings to more manageable form and to obtain basic underlying factor dimensions which account for the relationships between the variables, a principal components analysis and Varimax rotation were conducted. The first 488 variables from the Summary were used. Also included was a review of cross-cultural research to date and the problem of sampling as related to the area. A random stratified sample of 98 cultures was drawn from Textor's list of cultures for which there were at least 6 samples of contributions (not including contributions of the Ethnographic Atlas). Specific hypotheses of "Bibliographic Selection Bias" relating to this sample were tested, using actual comparisons in the Summary. Twelve factors of phi were obtained, and a thirteenth factor was disregarded, as it accounted for less than 5 percent of the total variance. The factors were rotated to the Varimax criterion to approach Thurstone's simple structure. Factor scores were computed for each culture on each factor dimension. For each of the following factors, the cultures with the highest positive and negative factor scores are given in order: Factor One: Structural Complexity (Thai, Copper Eskimo); Factor Two: Father-Centered Family (Rwala, Lamba); Factor Three: Tropical Rain Forest Culture (Trobriand, Siriono); Factor Four: Paternal Authority (Samoan, Navaho); Factor Five: Matrilineal Kin Groups (Trobriand, Semang); Factor Six: Status as Determined by Occupation (Thai, Lamba); Factor Seven: Aggressive Achievement Behavior (Ashanti, Hano); Factor Eight: North American Tribal Culture (Cheyenne, Ashanti); Factor Nine: Child Affection and Indulgence (Papago, Thonga); Factor Ten: Sexual Restraint Cultures (Thonga, Ifugao); Factor Eleven: Postpartum Sex Taboo (Tiv, Tanala); Factor Twelve: Adolescent Pecr Group Activity (Samoans, Jivaro). Within the limits of the study, these suggest key dimensions to describe a given culture, and it may be that future refinements of this work will permit the development of reliable and valid methods of ethnographic enquiry for the tapping of these major cultural dimensions.
The Impact of Previous Action on Bargaining - An Experiment on the Emergence of Preferences for Fairness Norms

The communication of participants to identify an acceptable bargaining outcome in the Nash bargaining game is all about fairness norms. Participants introduce fairness norms which yield a better outcome for themselves in order to convince the other participant of their bargaining proposal. Typically, these fairness norms are in line with theoretical predictions, which support a wide variety of different but fair outcomes the participants can choose from. In this experiment, we play two treatments of the Nash bargaining game: in one treatment, the participants play a dictator game prior to bargaining, and in the other treatment they do not. We find that participants who have not played the dictator game intensively discuss the outcome of the game and come to solutions closer to the equal split of the pie the longer they chat. This effect vanishes as soon as the participants have previous experience from a dictator game: instead of chatting, they establish the fairness norm introduced in the dictator game. Remarkably, if the dictator is unfair in the dictator game, he also gets a higher share of the pie in the Nash bargaining game.
Sd-squared Revisited: Reply to Coltheart, Tree, and Saunders (2010)

The connectionist triangle model of reading aloud proposes that semantic activation of phonology is particularly important for correct pronunciation of low-frequency exception words. Our consideration of this issue (Woollams, Lambon Ralph, Plaut, & Patterson, 2007) reported computational simulations demonstrating that reduction and disruption of this semantic activation resulted in the marked deficit in low-frequency exception word reading that is characteristic of surface dyslexia. We then presented 100 observations of reading aloud from 51 patients with semantic dementia (SD) demonstrating a universal decline into surface dyslexia, a phenomenon we termed " SD-squared. " Coltheart, Tree, and Saunders (2010) have more recently provided a simulation of the SD-squared data within the dual route cascaded (DRC) model, achieved by varying the amount of damage to components of the lexical and nonlexical pathways. Although they suggested that these simulations provide a closer fit to the SD patients' reading data than our own, we demonstrate here that this is not the case. Moreover, we argue that the connectionist triangle model account has substantially greater explanatory and predictive power than the DRC account. The role of semantic information in normal reading aloud is a matter of considerable debate and a dimension along which current computational models vary widely. In connectionist triangle models which eschew a structural level of lexical nonsemantic representation , the semantic pathway (orthography to semantics to phonology: O3 S3 P) is the primary source of whole-word knowledge in reading aloud and can supplement activation from the direct pathway (O3 P) to ensure correct production of words with exceptional spelling–sound correspondences. This view has been supported by multiple reports of a strong association between level of semantic knowledge and exception word reading amongst patients with semantic dementia (SD) who are characterized by progressive deterioration of meaning-level representations More recently , the extent of the anterior temporal lobe atrophy that causes SD has also been shown to correlate specifically with accuracy of exception word reading (Brambati, Ogar, Nehaus, Miller, & Gorno-Tempini, 2009). A contrasting view is provided by localist models of reading aloud, such as the dual route cascaded (DRC) model, which incorporate one or more structural levels of lexical nonsemantic representation 2001), obviating the need for involvement of semantic information to support the correct pronunciation of exception words. Advocates of this approach cite some (relatively rare) observations of classical single dissociations between semantic knowledge and exception word reading ability as apparent evidence for the …
Correlates of religious affiliation, religiosity and gender role attitudes among Lebanese Christian and Muslim college students

Purpose – The aim of this paper is to examine gender role attitudes between Christian and Muslim college students towards 11 most heatedly debated cliches in Lebanon that concern equal access of men and women to political and social spheres including employment.Design/methodology/approach – A three‐way MANOVA (gender by religion by class) was conducted on gender role items. Correlation of religiosity were performed between Christian and Muslim college students to explore associations between religiosity and gender role attitudes among respondents.Findings – Main effects were found among respondents, with females consistently holding less gendered attitudes than males; hence attesting to the universality of gender role attitudinal differences. The gender by religion interaction showed that Christian respondents and Muslim females documented less “traditionally demarcated” gender roles in social and public domains than Muslim males. Furthermore, class appeared to be a weak predictor of gender beliefs compar.
Delayed-onset muscle soreness alters the response to postural perturbations.

INTRODUCTION Eccentric contractions induce muscle fiber damage that is associated with delayed-onset muscle soreness and an impaired ability of the muscle to generate voluntary force. Pain and pathophysiological changes within the damaged muscle can delay or inhibit neuromuscular responses at the injured site, which is expected to have an effect on reflex activity of the muscle. PURPOSE The aim of the study was to investigate the reflex activity of knee muscles to rapid destabilizing perturbations, before, immediately after, and 24 and 48 h after eccentric exercise. METHODS Bipolar surface EMG signals were recorded from 10 healthy men with seven pairs of electrodes located on the knee extensor muscles (vastus medialis, rectus femoris, and vastus lateralis) and knee flexor muscles (the medial and lateral heads of the hamstring and the medial and lateral heads of gastrocnemius) of the right leg during rapid perturbations. RESULTS The maximal voluntary contraction force decreased by 24% ± 4.9% immediately after exercise and remained reduced by 21.4% ± 4.1% at 24 h and by 21.6% ± 9.9% at 48 h after exercise with respect to baseline. During the postexercise postural perturbations, the EMG average rectified value of the knee extensor muscles was significantly lower than baseline (P < 0.001). Moreover, the decrease in average rectified value over time during postexercise sustained contractions was greatest compared with the session before exercise (P < 0.0001). CONCLUSIONS Reflex activity in leg muscles elicited by rapid destabilizing perturbations is reduced after exercise-induced muscle soreness.
Results of Surgical Management of Osteochondritis Dissecans of the Ankle in the Pediatric and Adolescent Population

Background: There is a paucity of published literature on operative management of osteochondritis dissecans (OCD) in the ankle in adolescents. This study seeks to elucidate patient and lesion characteristics associated with surgical success and failure as well as reporting functional outcomes. Methods: Retrospective chart review identified all patients aged 18 years old or younger surgically treated for OCD of the ankle at our institution from 2001 to 2010. This included 109 ankles in 100 patients (75 female, 25 male), mean age 14.3±2.3 years (range, 7 to 18 y), with a median follow-up of 3.3 years (range, 1 to 10.8 y). Patient and lesion data, surgical procedure, clinical results, and complications were recorded. Postoperative radiographs were reviewed in 80 ankles. A return to sport survey and a Foot and Ankle Outcome Score (FAOS) was sent to all patients. Multivariate statistical analysis evaluated predictors of reoperation rate, Berndt and Harty clinical grade, and FAOS scores. Kaplan-Meier analysis was applied to determine freedom from reoperation. Results: The OCD lesion was most commonly found on the medial talus (80, 73%). The most common procedures performed included transarticular drilling (59, 54%), fixation (22, 20%), and excision microfracture (27, 26%). The overall rate of reoperation was 27% (29/109). Berndt and Harty clinical grade was poor (33, 30%), fair (23, 21%), and good (53, 49%). Reoperation rates were significantly higher for OCD lesions in which postoperative radiographs had no change or looked worse (10/16, 63%) (P=0.002). Thirty-six of 44 survey respondents (82%) were satisfied and 37 (84%) returned to sports at a median time of 6 months. Average FAOS score was 77±18. Multiple linear regression confirmed that female sex and elevated body mass index were significant negative predictors for FAOS score. Conclusions: The reoperation rate following surgical intervention for OCD of the ankle is high. Females and those with a higher body mass index may have worse subjective functional ankle outcomes. Level of Evidence: Level IV—retrospective case series.
Anticipating Uncertainty: Straddles around Earnings Announcements

Straddles on individual stocks generally earn negative and significant returns. However, average at-the-money straddles from 3 days before an earnings announcement to the announcement date yield a highly significant 3.34% return. The positive returns on straddles indicate that investors underestimate the magnitude of uncertainty around earnings announcements. We find that positive straddle returns are more pronounced for smaller firms and firms with higher volatility, higher kurtosis, more volatile past earnings surprises, and less trading volume/higher transaction costs. This suggests that when firm signals are noisy, and/or when it is costlier to trade, investors underestimate the uncertainty associated with earnings announcements.
Error Thresholds on Correlated Fitness Landscapes

Abstract The evolution of molecular quasispecies on two different complex fitness landscapes, the Sherrington Kirkpatrick spin glass and the Graph Bipartitioning landscape, is investigated in dependence on replication fidelity and population size. Three different regimes of replication fidelity are detected. At high copying fidelity one obtains a population with high mean fitness localized around a time-independent consensus sequence. For large mutation frequencies the population is spread over the entire sequence space and the average fitness vanishes. In the intermediate regime the population is centered around a consensus sequence which moves in sequence space. Although the genetic information is lost over time, the population maintains an average fitness significantly above zero. A theoretical approximation is derived for the error threshold as a function of the sequence length.
Communicating In and Through “Murderball”: Masculinity and Disability in Wheelchair Rugby

This article investigates communicative practices surrounding wheelchair rugby, a growing sport played worldwide by people with quadriplegia. Researchers have studied extensively the practice of using sport for rehabilitation, but the role of communication in this process has been overlooked. We argue that participating in this sport is itself a communicative act challenging ableist views of disability, and that the behavior of wheelchair rugby players transforms the stigma associated with their condition via enactments of hypermasculinity. Additionally, we suggest that the sport's organizational culture operates as a space for newly quadriplegic persons to learn strategies for coping with their disability and the life changes that surround it. While we recognize the rehabilitative potential of these enactments, we note the ways the activity reifies patriarchal notions of gender and sport as well as validates traditional, often ableist norms of masculinity that complicate the social meanings of disability sport.
Anatomy of the Nasal Hump

Histologic studies were performed on the cartilaginous nasal hump in 10 cadavers (newborn to age 80) and 10 clinical patients. In all sections, the upper two-thirds of the nasal cartilaginous hump is a fused unit between the upper lateral cartilages and the septum. This fused unit is permanently altered when the hump is removed.
Categorical equational systems : algebraic models and equational reasoning

We introduce two abstract notions of equational algebraic system, called Equational System (ES) and Term Equational System (TES), in order to achieve sufficient expressivity as needed in modern applications in computer science. These generalize the classical concept of (enriched) algebraic theory of Kelly and Power [1993]. We also develop a theory for constructing free algebras for ESs and a theory of equational reasoning for TESs. In Part I, we introduce the general abstract, yet practical, concept of equational system and develop finitary and transfinitary conditions under which we give an explicit construction of free algebras for ESs. This free construction extends the well-known construction of free algebras for ω-cocontinuous endofunctors to an equational setting, capturing the intuition that free algebras consist of freely constructed terms quotiented by given equations and congruence rules. We further show the monadicity and cocom-pleteness of categories of algebras for ESs under the finitary and transfinitary conditions. To illustrate the expressivity of equational systems, we exhibit various examples including two modern applications, the Σ-monoids of Fiore et al. [1999] and the π-algebras of Stark [2005]. In Part II, we introduce the more concrete notion of term equational system, which is obtained by specializing the concept of equational system, but remains more general than that of enriched algebraic theory. We first develop a sound logical deduction system, called Term Equational Logic (TEL), for equational reasoning about algebras of TESs. Then, to pursue a complete logic, we give an internal completeness result, from which together with the explicit construction of free algebras one can typically synthesize sound and complete rewriting-style equational logics. To exemplify this scenario, we give two applications: multi-sorted algebraic theories and nominal equational theories of Clouston and Pitts [2007] and of Gabbay and Mathijssen [2007].
Learning-Based Spectrum Sensing for Cognitive Radio Systems

This paper presents a novel pattern recognition approach to spectrum sensing in collaborative cognitive radio systems. In the proposed scheme, discriminative features from the received signal are extracted at each node and used by a classifier at a central node to make a global decision about the availability of spectrum holes for use by the cognitive radio network. Specifically, linear and polynomial classifiers are proposed with energy, cyclostationary, or coherent features. Simulation results in terms of detection and false alarm probabilities of all proposed schemes are presented. It is concluded that cyclostationary-based schemes are the most reliable in terms of detecting primary users in the spectrum, however, at the expense of a longer sensing time compared to coherent based schemes. Results show that the performance is improved by having more users collaborating in providing features to the classifier. It is also shown that, in this spectrum sensing application, a linear classifier has a comparable performance to a second-order polynomial classifier and hence provides a better choice due to its simplicity. Finally, the impact of the observation window on the detection performance is presented.
Implementation of feature extraction methods and support vector machine for classification of partial body weight supports in overground robot-aided walking

A general need for Wearable Robots (WRs) is to perform optimal selection of information for control and monitoring during daily assistance with an autonomous systems. A good feature selection algorithm is key to perform automated estimation of the mode of locomotion under environmental variations. Ambulatory body weight support (BWS) systems can be combined with WRs to provide safe ambulation and support in overground walking in cases of lower limb paralysis. This study aimed to develop a support vector machine (SVM) model for binary and multiclass classification that performs gait pattern recognition for different values of partial BWS during overground robot-aided walking. The principal component analysis (PCA) and kernel-based PCA (kPCA) were applied to improve the classification performance. As a result, the combination of temporal and kinematic features showed to improve the accuracy in the discrimination of gait patterns in healthy patients (88%). In SVM multiclass classification the “one-against-one” approach showed to have a more stable performance (true positive and true negative rate are consistent) than “one-against-all” approach and also lower computational cost both for training and SVM's decision making.
Identification of a new group of Chlamydia psittaci strains called TWAR

A new group of Chlamydia psittaci strains has been identified. They are called TWAR after the laboratory designation of the first two isolates. Twelve strains were isolated from pharyngeal swabs of different persons with acute respiratory disease in Seattle, Wash. , during 1983 to 1986. One strain was obtained from the eye of a child during the trachoma vaccine study in Taiwan in 1965. Nine strains were characterized in this study. TWAR organisms formed intracytoplasmic inclusions in HeLa cells which were morphologically typical of C. psittaci and iodine stain negative (contained no glycogen). Immunological analysis with various chlamydia-specific monoclonal antibodies revealed that TWAR strains belong to the genus Chlamydia, are distinct from C. trachomatis, and are serologically unique among C. psittaci. All TWAR strains so far isolated appear identical serologically. TWAR organisms grew poorly in egg and cell cultures and demonstrated low virulence to mice by intracerebral, intranasal, and intravenous inoculation. Available data suggest that the TWAR strain is a primary human pathogen.