Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Distinctive roles of age, sex, and genetics in shaping transcriptional variation of human immune responses to microbial challenges

Significance Identifying the drivers of the interindividual diversity of the human immune system is crucial to understand their consequences on immune-mediated diseases. By examining the transcriptional responses of 1,000 individuals to various microbial challenges, we show that age and sex influence the expression of many immune-related genes, but their effects are overall moderate, whereas genetic factors affect a smaller gene set but with a stronger effect. We identify numerous genetic variants that affect transcriptional variation on infection, many of which are associated with autoimmune or inflammatory disorders. These results enable additional exploration of the role of regulatory variants in the pathogenesis of immune-related diseases and improve our understanding of the respective effects of age, sex, and genetics on immune response variation. The contribution of host genetic and nongenetic factors to immunological differences in humans remains largely undefined. Here, we generated bacterial-, fungal-, and viral-induced immune transcriptional profiles in an age- and sex-balanced cohort of 1,000 healthy individuals and searched for the determinants of immune response variation. We found that age and sex affected the transcriptional response of most immune-related genes, with age effects being more stimulus-specific relative to sex effects, which were largely shared across conditions. Although specific cell populations mediated the effects of age and sex on gene expression, including CD8+ T cells for age and CD4+ T cells and monocytes for sex, we detected a direct effect of these intrinsic factors for the majority of immune genes. The mapping of expression quantitative trait loci (eQTLs) revealed that genetic factors had a stronger effect on immune gene regulation than age and sex, yet they affected a smaller number of genes. Importantly, we identified numerous genetic variants that manifested their regulatory effects exclusively on immune stimulation, including a Candida albicans-specific master regulator at the CR1 locus. These response eQTLs were enriched in disease-associated variants, particularly for autoimmune and inflammatory disorders, indicating that differences in disease risk may result from regulatory variants exerting their effects only in the presence of immune stress. Together, this study quantifies the respective effects of age, sex, genetics, and cellular heterogeneity on the interindividual variability of immune responses and constitutes a valuable resource for further exploration in the context of different infection risks or disease outcomes.
Angiotensin-converting enzyme. I. Activity and correlation with serum lysozyme in sarcoidosis, other chest or lymph node diseases and healthy persons.

Serum angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) activity was studied in healthy controls, in 57 untreated sarcoidosis patients, and in 164 patients with other chest or lymph node diseases. The serum ACE activity of healthy persons was independent of sex, intake of meals, and smoking habits. There were no diurnal variations. Healthy children had a significantly higher ACE mean value than adults, whose ACE activity was not affected by age. The sarcoidosis patients had the highest ACE mean values, but those of patients with silicosis and asbestosis were also significantly elevated. Pulmonary cancer patients had decreased serum ACE activity, which was probably due to antimitotic treatment. Serum lysozyme (LZM) concentrations did not correlate with normal ACE activity, but the correlation between elevated ACE and LZM was significant in sarcoidosis and silicosis, and the trend was clearly the same for asbestosis. This indicates separate sources for these enzymes when ACE activity is normal, and a common source, i.e. macrophages, when ACE activity is increased. ACE production in certain diseases involving macrophages may be due to the bradykinin inhibiting effect of this enzyme.
Design of density tapered array for arbitrary density distribution

Density tapered array has a feature of having uniform excitations in all array elements. Then, a feeding network becomes very simple and array antenna will be applied for multi frequency operations. In this paper, a MATLAB program of achieving arbitrary density tapered distributions is developed. For example, the density distribution of cosine on a pedestal is designed. Moreover, radiation patterns in the wide range of frequencies are investigated. For the frequency change from 900 MHz to 2500 MHz, low side lobe levels are kept unchanged.
The Effects of Prenatal Care Utilization on Maternal Health and Health Behaviors

While many economic studies have explored the role of prenatal care in infant health production, the literature is sporadic on the effects of prenatal care on the mother. This research contributes to this understudied but important area using a unique large dataset of sibling newborns delivered by 0.17 million mothers. We apply within-mother estimators to find robust evidence that poor prenatal care utilization due to late onset of care, low frequency of care visits, or combinations of the two significantly increases the risks of maternal insufficient gestational weight gain, prenatal smoking, premature rupture of membranes, precipitous labor, no breastfeeding, postnatal underweight, and postpartum smoking. The magnitude of the estimates relative to the respective sample means of the outcome variables ranges from 3% to 33%. The results highlight the importance of receiving timely and sufficient prenatal care in improving maternal health and health behaviors during pregnancy as well as after childbirth. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
In Vitro Inhibition of Streptococcus mutans Biofilm Formation on Hydroxyapatite by Subinhibitory Concentrations of Anthraquinones

ABSTRACT We report that certain anthraquinones (AQs) reduce Streptococcus mutans biofilm formation on hydroxyapatite at concentrations below the MIC. Although AQs are known to generate reactive oxygen species, the latter do not underlie the observed effect. Our results suggest that AQs inhibit S. mutans biofilm formation by causing membrane perturbation.
FReeNet: Multi-Identity Face Reenactment

This paper presents a novel multi-identity face reenactment framework, named FReeNet, to transfer facial expressions from an arbitrary source face to a target face with a shared model. The proposed FReeNet consists of two parts: Unified Landmark Converter (ULC) and Geometry-aware Generator (GAG). The ULC adopts an encode-decoder architecture to efficiently convert expression in a latent landmark space, which significantly narrows the gap of the face contour between source and target identities. The GAG leverages the converted landmark to reenact the photorealistic image with a reference image of the target person. Moreover, a new triplet perceptual loss is proposed to force the GAG module to learn appearance and geometry information simultaneously, which also enriches facial details of the reenacted images. Further experiments demonstrate the superiority of our approach for generating photorealistic and expression-alike faces, as well as the flexibility for transferring facial expressions between identities.
Klp67A destabilises pre-anaphase microtubules but subsequently is required to stabilise the central spindle

Klp67A is a member of the Kip3 subfamily of microtubule destabilising kinesins, the loss of which results in abnormally long and stable pre-anaphase microtubules. Here we examine its role during cytokinesis in Drosophila primary spermatocytes that require the coordinated interaction of an interior and peripheral set of central spindle microtubules. In mutants anaphase B spindles elongated with normal kinetics but bent towards the cortex. Both peripheral and interior spindle microtubules then formed diminished bundles of abnormally positioned central spindle microtubules associated with the pavarotti-KLP and KLP3A motor proteins. The minus ends of these were poorly aligned as revealed by Asp protein localisation. Furrows always initiated at the sites of central spindle bundles but could be unilateral or nonequatorially positioned. Ectopic furrows were stimulated by the interior central spindle and formed only after this structure buckled and contacted the cortex. Furrows often halted and regressed as they could not be sustained by the central spindles that became increasing unstable over time and often completely degraded. Consistent with this, actin and anillin failed to form homogenous bands. Thus, the Klp67A microtubule catastrophe factor is required for cytokinesis by regulating both the formation and stability of the central spindle.
A Method for Typing Shigella sonnei, using Colicine Production as a Marker

Infection with Shigella sonnei is the most common identifiable cause of diarrhoea in this country at present, and the absence of a satisfactory method of typing the organism has greatly hampered the study of its mode of spread. Bojlen (1934), studying the biochemical reactions of 1,786 Sonne cultures, isolated from 741 patients in Denmark, described four biochemical types based upon the fermentation of maltose and xylose. However, when these cultures were examined at a later date only xylose fermentation was found to be stable. Although other workers (Cruickshank and Swyer, 1940; Tee, 1955) found xylose fermentation useful for tracing Sonne infections, the -method has only a limited value in this country; for example, Tee (1955) examined cultures from . 812 patients and found that only 44 (5.4%) fermented xylose. Phage-typing of S. sonnei was first reported by Hammarstrom (1947) in Sweden, and appears to have proved useful to some workers (Ludford, 1953; Szturm-Rubinsten and Thibault, 1956). In this country the method was used by Mayr-Harting (1952) and by Tee (1955). The latter, who tested ;829 Sonne cultures with 10 unadapted phages, concluded: "This method of phage-typing, because of evidence of type instability and because the majority of strains belong to the same phage-type, has little practical value as a routine procedure in the control of Sonne dysentery in this country. " Davies (1954) described a simple disc technique for testing Sonne cultures for sulphonamide sensitivity. Strains isolated from family or institu-tional outbreaks were usually either all sensitive or all resistant; in outbreaks where mixed infections occurred there was evidence of multiple sources of infection. Occasionally, exacting strains were found. which required for normal growth the addition of one or more amino-acids to the synthetic medium used for testing the sensitivity to -sulphonamides by this method. The dependence upon one or more amino-acids may be used as a "marker " for tracing infection with exacting strains. None of these procedures has proved entirely satisfactory because no procedure has divided the species into a sufficient number of commonly encountered types. Fredericq (1946a) tested the sensitivity of a number of non-lactose-fermenting intestinal bacteria, including Salmonellae and Shigellae, to antibacterial substances produced by two strains of Escherichia coli and one aerobic spore-bearing bacillus, and showed that they could be divided into groups by means of their pattern of susceptibility to these substances. He suggested that it might be possible to establish for each type of organism a characteristic " antibiotic sensitivity formula" analogous to the antigenic formula already established for members of the Salmonella group. This work led us to investigate the sensitivity of Sonne strains to colicines to see if this property could be used as a basis for a typing method.
Joint Detection of Visible Light Communication Signals Under Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access

We present a phase pre-distorted joint detection (JD) method to improve the system performance of uplink non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) in visible light communications. The optimal phase pre-distortion term was first computed based on the channel information of different users. We then pre-distort the users’ transmit signals with the optimal phase term to improve the system performance. The proposed scheme outperforms the previously proposed successive interference cancellation-based NOMA with or without pre-distortion. Experimental results show that the phase pre-distorted JD method works well under the cases of low, medium, and high power ratios.
Periodontal ligament cell populations: The central role of fibroblasts in creating a unique tissue

Fibroblasts are the predominant cells of the periodontal ligament (PL) and have important roles in the development, function, and regeneration of the tooth support apparatus. Biological processes initiated during the formation of the PL contribute to the long‐lasting homeostasic properties exhibited by PL fibroblast populations.
Short axon neuronal subsystems in the visual cortex of the monkey.

In seeking for a functional schema of the organization of the visual centers, we have studied with the Golgi method the varieties and connections of short-axon cells and other related neurons in the middle layers of the striate area in the adult monkey. Short-axon cells in layer IV have been classified into stellate cells with recurrent ascending axons ending in layers III and IVa, and clewed cells with characteristic axonal nets localized in their own dendritic field. Short-axon cells have been found in clusters or glomeruli upon which terminal branches of cortical afferents have been observed. It is suggested that periglomerular stellate cells with ascending axons connect clusters of clewed cells with small, medium and large stellate and pyramidal cells of layers III and IVa, which in turn would activate the giant solitary cells of layer V through synaptic contacts along vertical descending axons. Two levels of cortical afferent ramifications in layers III and IVc have been identified. Their morphologic.
Incremental value of high-sensitivity C-reactive protein and N-terminal pro-B-type natriuretic peptide for the prediction of postoperative cardiac events in noncardiac vascular surgery patients

ObjectivesHigh-sensitivity C-reactive protein (hs-CRP) and N-terminal pro-B-type natriuretic peptide (NT-proBNP) are associated with the presence of coronary artery disease. The aim of this study was to assess the prognostic value of hs-CRP and NT-proBNP for postoperative cardiac events in noncardiac vascular surgery patients. MethodsIn 592 patients, cardiac history, hs-CRP, and NT-proBNP levels were assessed preoperatively. Levels of hs-CRP of at least 6.5 mg/l and NT-proBNP of at least 350 pg/ml were defined as the optimal cut-off values for the prediction of postoperative cardiac events. The end point was the composite of 30-day cardiovascular death, Q-wave myocardial infarction, and troponin T release. Multivariable regression analysis was used to evaluate the association between hs-CRP, NT-proBNP and the end point. The performance of the risk models based on cardiac risk factors alone and the addition of both biomarkers was determined using C statistics. ResultsAfter adjustment for cardiac risk factors, site of surgery and type of procedure, elevated levels of hs-CRP (odds ratio 2.54; 95% confidence interval 1.50–4.30) and NT-proBNP (odds ratio 4.78; 95% confidence interval 2.71–8.42) remained independent predictors for postoperative cardiac events. When hs-CRP and NT-proBNP were added to the cardiac risk score, the C statistic improved from 0.79 to 0.84. A combined elevation of hs-CRP and NT-proBNP provided a seven-fold higher risk for postoperative cardiac events. ConclusionBoth hs-CRP and NT-proBNP have additional value in the prediction of postoperative cardiac events in vascular surgery patients. Their integrated use improves cardiac risk stratification.
Nanometer Resolution and Coherent Optical Dipole Coupling of Two Individual Molecules

By performing cryogenic laser spectroscopy under a scanning probe electrode that induces a local electric field, we have resolved two individual fluorescent molecules separated by 12 nanometers in an organic crystal. The two molecules undergo a strong coherent dipole-dipole coupling that produces entangled sub- and superradiant states. Under intense laser illumination, both molecules are excited via a two-photon transition, and the fluorescence from this doubly excited system displays photon bunching. Our experimental scheme can be used to optically resolve molecules at the nanometer scale and to manipulate the degree of entanglement among them.
Investigating Mobile Data Services Innovation and Popularity: an Online Review Perspectives

The prevalence of advanced mobile phones has increased the popularity of mobile data services (MDS). But, the flood of new MDS in the market has caused hyper-competition among MDS providers. While the market is fertile, only a few MDS providers make money. This research studies the question of MDS profitability (popularity) from two angles. First, the research posits that one strategic advantage of certain MDS providers is their ability to rapidly innovate. Second, the research posits that innovation inspiration can be derived from reviews ubiquitous in MDS download sites such as the Apple iStore and Appszoom. A statistical analysis of Appszoom data reveals that online reviews positively impact both MDS innovation and popularity. Also, MDS innovation is found to positively mediate the relationship between online reviews and MDS popularity. Theoretical and practical contributions are discussed.
Bispectral Index and Middle Latency Auditory Evoked Potentials in Children Younger Than Two-Years-Old

BACKGROUND:We analyzed the values of the bispectral index (BIS) and midlatency auditory evoked potentials (MLAEP) and their correlation with the modified Ramsay score (RS) during wakefulness and natural sleep in healthy children without pharmacological sedation. METHODS:Fifty-three healthy children younger than 2-yr-old were studied. Children were evaluated simultaneously using the modified RS, the BIS, and MLAEPs. Each patient was studied only once. The correlation and agreement were studied. The correlation among the three methods was determined using the Spearman Rank Correlation test and the agreement among the methods was assessed using by Cohen’s Kappa test. RESULTS:There was a moderate-to-good correlation (r) among the three methods (P = 0.01): BIS and MLAEP (r = 0.574), BIS and RS (r = −0.504), and MLAEP and RS (r = −0.624). However, the level of agreement (&kgr;) was only poor to fair: BIS and MLAEP (&kgr; = 0.392), BIS and RS (&kgr; = 0.270), and MLAEP and RS (&kgr; = 0.409). All the correlations were lower in children between 1 and 6 mo-of-age. When the children were asleep (RS: 3–5), the BIS values were higher in children younger than 1 mo-of-age than in children older than 6 mo-of-age (P after Bonferroni correction = 0.028). CONCLUSIONS:The BIS, MLAEP, and RS have a good correlation in children younger than 2 yr not receiving pharmacological sedation, though the level of agreement was poor.
A study of the rate of protein synthesis before and during the administration of L-triiodothyronine to patients with myxedema and healthy volunteers using N-15 glycine.

The purpose of this paper is to report studies of the protein synthesis rate and the size of the metabolic pool using the amino acid, glycine labeled with isotopic nitrogen N-15. Employing the technique described by San Pietro and Rittenberg (1) studies were made on six patients with primary myxedema, four of them before and during the administration of l-triiodothyronine.2 Five healthy volunteers, one of whom received 1-triiodothyronine, are also included in this report. The N-15 glycine method used in this study is based upon the assumptions that dietary amino acids interact with tissue constituents at a rapid rate (2) and that a dietary amino acid either is used for protein synthesis or is oxidized and its nitrogen excreted. Figure 1, modified from San Pietro and Rittenberg, illustrates the technique. The metabolic pool (P) is defined as the mixture of nitrogenous compounds derived from the diet and from the breakdown of tissues. Dietary nitrogen enters this pool where part of it is used for protein synthesis. Another part is converted to urea, mixes with the urea already present and is excreted in the urine. The small amount of non-urea nitrogen can be disregarded. The total urea in the body constitutes the urea pool. For the steady
An Anti-Jam GPS Receiver, using Markov Chain, Monte Carlo Integration

An adaptive array algorithm is proposed to mit- igate against the presence of co-channel interference or hos- tile jammers for a GPS receiver. The unknown time and frequency offset estimation for the receiver, employs Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) integration, utilizing a novel, multi- dimensional, Bayesian, global optimization strategy for initializ- ing a Metropolis-Hastings proposal distribution. The technique enables the design of a high performance multi-user receiver, capable of overcoming the near-far problem, mitigates multipath and interference and provides significantly improved time and frequency estimation performance over standard matched filter algorithm approaches.
Locomotor Training and Muscle Function After Incomplete Spinal Cord Injury: Case Series

Abstract Background/Objective: To determine whether 9 weeks of locomotor training (LT) results in changes in muscle strength and alterations in muscle size and activation after chronic incomplete spinal cord injury (SCI). Study Design: Longitudinal prospective case series. Methods: Five individuals with chronic incomplete SCI completed 9 weeks of LT. Peak isometric torque, torque developed within the initial 200 milliseconds of contraction (Torque200), average rate of torque development (ARTD), and voluntary activation deficits were determined using isokinetic dynamometry for the knee-extensor (KE) and plantar-flexor (PF) muscle groups before and after LT. Maximum muscle crosssectional area (CSA) was measured prior to and after LT. Results: Locomotor training resulted in improved peak torque production in all participants, with the largest increases in the more-involved PF (43.9% ± 20.0%), followed by the more-involved KE (21.1% ± 12.3%). Even larger improvements were realized in Torque200 and ARTD (indices of explosive torque), after LT. In particular, the largest improvements were realized in the Torque200 measures of the PF muscle group. Improvements in torque production were associated with enhanced voluntary activation in both the KE and ankle PF muscles and an increase in the maximal CSA of the ankle PF muscles. Conclusion: Nine weeks of LT resulted in positive alterations in the KE and PF muscle groups that included an increase in muscle size, improved voluntary activation, and an improved ability to generate both peak and explosive torque about the knee and ankle joints.
Properties and applications of high-mobility semiconducting nanotubes

Experiments to determine the resistivity and charge-carrier mobility in semiconducting carbon nanotubes are reviewed. Electron transport experiments on long chemical-vapour-deposition-grown semiconducting carbon nanotubes are interpreted in terms of diffusive transport in a field-effect transistor. This allows for extraction of the field-effect and saturation mobilities for hole carriers, as well as an estimate of the intrinsic hole mobility of the nanotubes. The intrinsic mobility can exceed 100 000 cm2 V−1 s−1 at room temperature, which is greater than any other known semiconductor. Scanned-probe experiments show a low degree of disorder in chemical-vapour-deposition-grown semiconducting carbon nanotubes compared with laser-ablation produced nanotubes, and show conductivity and mean-free-path consistent with the high mobility values seen in transport experiments. The application of high-mobility semiconducting nanotubes to charge detection and memory is also reviewed; it is shown that single electronic charges may be detected with a semiconducting nanotube field-effect transistor at operating temperatures up to 200 K.