Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Loss of the CD56hiCD16− NK cell subset and NK cell interferon‐γ production during antiretroviral therapy for HIV‐1: partial recovery by human growth hormone

Previous studies have shown that human natural killer (NK) cells are lost from the periphery and are functionally suppressed during HIV‐1 infection, and that the administration of highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) results in a recovery of NK cell numbers in HIV‐1‐infected individuals. However, despite this recovery, interleukin (IL)‐2 + IL‐12‐driven interferon (IFN)‐γ production by NK cells has been shown to remain suppressed after HAART. Here we show that the innate immune factor IL‐15 in combination with IL‐12 is also unable to recover NK cell IFN‐γ production in HAART‐treated individuals. Furthermore, we also demonstrate an imbalance in the distribution of CD56loCD16hi and CD56hiCD16– NK subsets after successful HAART, CD56hiCD16– cells being reduced substantially in HIV‐1 patients on HAART. Treatment of patients with combined human growth hormone and antiretroviral therapy resulted in further enhancement in the absolute numbers and the proportion of NK cells in some individuals in the absence of parallel effects on CD4+ T cells. Furthermore, in these individuals HAART with growth hormone resulted in an enhancement of cytokine‐driven NK cell activation and IFN‐γ production compared to the HAART‐only baseline.
Increased Expression of Regulatory Tr1 Cells in Recurrent Hepatitis C after Liver Transplantation

Immune response failure during HCV infection has been associated with the activity of regulatory T cells. Hepatitis C‐related cirrhosis is the main reason for liver transplantation. However, 80% of transplanted patients present an accelerated recurrence of the disease. This study assessed the involvement of regulatory T‐cell subsets (CD4+CD25+ cells: ‘Treg’ and CD49b+CD18+ cells: ‘T regulatory‐1’ cells), in the recurrence of HCV after liver transplantation, using transcriptomic analysis, ELISA assays on serum samples and immunohistochemistry on liver biopsies from liver recipients 1 and 5 years after transplantation. Three groups of patients were included: stable HCV‐negative recipients and those with mild and severe hepatitis C recurrence. At 5 years, Treg markers were overexpressed in all HCV+ recipients. By contrast, Tr1 markers were only overexpressed in patients with severe recurrence. At 1 year, a trend toward the overexpression of Tr1 was noted in patients evolving toward severe recurrence. IL‐10 production, a characteristic of the Tr1 subset, was enhanced in severe recurrence at both 1 and 5 years. These results suggest that Tr1 are enhanced during severe HCV recurrence after liver transplantation and could be predictive of HCV recurrence. High levels of IL‐10 at 1 year could be predictive of severe recurrence, and high IL‐10 producers might warrant more intensive management.
Cutting Edge: Selective Usage of Chemokine Receptors by Plasmacytoid Dendritic Cells1

The existence of dendritic cell (DC) subsets is firmly established, but their trafficking properties are virtually unknown. In this study, we show that myeloid (M-DCs) and plasmacytoid (P-DCs) DCs isolated from human blood differ widely in the capacity to migrate to chemotactic stimuli. The pattern of chemokine receptors expressed by blood M-DCs and P-DCs, with the exception of CCR7, is similar. However, most chemokine receptors of P-DCs, in particular those specific for inflammatory chemokines and classical chemotactic agonists, are not functional in circulating cells. Following maturation induced by CD40 ligation, the receptors for inflammatory chemokines are down-regulated, and CCR7 on P-DCs becomes coupled to migration. The drastically impaired capacity of blood P-DCs to migrate in response to inflammatory chemotactic signals contrasts with the response to lymph node-homing chemokines, indicating a propensity to migrate to secondary lymphoid organs rather than to sites of inflammation.
PL-SLAM: Real-time monocular visual SLAM with points and lines

Low textured scenes are well known to be one of the main Achilles heels of geometric computer vision algorithms relying on point correspondences, and in particular for visual SLAM. Yet, there are many environments in which, despite being low textured, one can still reliably estimate line-based geometric primitives, for instance in city and indoor scenes, or in the so-called “Manhattan worlds”, where structured edges are predominant. In this paper we propose a solution to handle these situations. Specifically, we build upon ORB-SLAM, presumably the current state-of-the-art solution both in terms of accuracy as efficiency, and extend its formulation to simultaneously handle both point and line correspondences. We propose a solution that can even work when most of the points are vanished out from the input images, and, interestingly it can be initialized from solely the detection of line correspondences in three consecutive frames. We thoroughly evaluate our approach and the new initialization strategy on the TUM RGB-D benchmark and demonstrate that the use of lines does not only improve the performance of the original ORB-SLAM solution in poorly textured frames, but also systematically improves it in sequence frames combining points and lines, without compromising the efficiency.
Gefitinib resistance in HCC mahlavu cells: Upregulation of CD133 expression, activation of IGF‐1R signaling pathway, and enhancement of IGF‐1R nuclear translocation

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is the major form of primary liver cancer which accounts for more than half million deaths annually worldwide. While the incidence of HCC is still on the rise, options of treatment are limited and the overall survival rate is poor. The acquisition of cancer drug resistance remains one of the key hurdles to successful treatment. Clearly, a thorough understanding of the underlying mechanisms is needed for new strategies to design novel treatments and/or to improve the current therapies. In the present study, we examined the expression of cancer stem cell (CSC) marker CD133, the activation of insulin‐like growth factor 1 receptor (IGF‐1R) signaling, and the nuclear translocation of IGF‐1R in HCC Mahlavu cells under the treatment of gefitinib, a cancer drug that inhibits epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) pathway. Our results demonstrated that Mahlavu cells exhibited strong gefitinib resistance and the CD133 expression level was dramatically increased (from 3.88% to 32%) after drug treatment. In addition, the gefitinib treated cells displayed increased levels of phosphorylation in IGF‐1R and Akt, indicating the intensified activation of this cancer‐associated signaling pathway. Moreover, we revealed that IGF‐1R underwent nuclear translocation in gefitinib treated cells using confocal microscopy. The IGF‐1R nuclear translocation was enhanced under gefitinib treatment and appeared in a dose‐dependent manner. Our findings suggest that increased IGF‐1R nuclear translocation after gefitinib treatment may contribute to the drug resistance and IGF1‐R activation, which might also associate with the upregulation of CD133 expression. J. Cell. Physiol. 227: 2947–2952, 2012. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Quantifying patient adherence during active orthodontic treatment with removable appliances using microelectronic wear-time documentation.

OBJECTIVES The aim of this study was to quantify the wear times of removable appliances during active orthodontic treatment. MATERIALS AND METHODS The wear times of 141 orthodontic patients treated with active removable appliances in different locations were documented over a period of 3 months using an incorporated microsensor. Gender, age, treatment location, health insurance status, and type of device were evaluated with respect to wear time. Significant associations between wear times and patient factors were calculated using non-parametric tests. RESULTS The median daily wear time was 9.7 hours/day for the entire cohort, far less than the 15 hours/day prescribed. Younger patients wore their appliances for longer than older patients (7-9 years 12.1 hours/day, 10-12 years 9.8 hours/day, and 13-15 years 8.5 hours/day; P < 0.0001). The median wear time for females (10.6 hours/day) was 1.4 hours/day longer than males (9.3 hours/day; P = 0.017). Patients treated at different locations wore their devices with a difference of up to 5.0 hours/day. Privately insured patients had significantly longer median wear times than statutorily insured patients. No significant difference in wear time was noted according to device type. CONCLUSIONS The daily wear time of removable appliances during the active phase of orthodontic therapy can be routinely quantified using integrated microelectronic sensors. The relationship between orthodontist and patient seems to play a key role in patient adherence. Wear-time documentation provides the basis for more individualized wear-time recommendations for patients with removable appliances. This could result in a more efficient, shorter, and less painful orthodontic therapy.
Earnings Management to Avoid Losses and Earnings Declines in Croatia

This paper provides empirical evidence that Croatian companies manage reported earnings to avoid losses and earnings declines. Specifically, we find that the cross-sectional distribution of scaled earnings and changes in earnings show high frequencies of small positive earnings and small increases in earnings while the frequencies of small losses and small decreases in earnings are less frequent. Furthermore, we demonstrate that these discontinuities are likely due to discretionary accruals. We examine the frequency distribution of reported earnings after removing discretionary accruals and find that the cross sectional distributions of non-discretionary scaled earnings shows lower frequencies of small positive earnings and higher frequencies of small negative earnings. Additionally, the cross sectional distribution of non-discretionary change in earnings demonstrates mixed frequencies of non-discretionary changes in earnings. Overall, this paper adds new empirical evidence to the benchmark-beating literature by demonstrating international evidence of earnings management around zero earnings and zero earnings changes benchmarks.
Friendship network composition and subjective wellbeing

Using data from the UK Community Life Survey, we present the first study to examine the relationship between heterogeneity in one’s friendship network and subjective wellbeing. We measure network heterogeneity by the extent to which one’s friends are similar to oneself with regard to ethnicity and religion. We find that people who have friendship networks with characteristics dissimilar to themselves have lower levels of subjective wellbeing. Specifically, our two-stage least squares (2SLS) estimates, using measures of ethnic and religious diversity based on the Herfindahl-type fractionalization index that are flipped between adjoining rural/urban areas as instruments, suggest that a standard deviation increase in the proportion of one’s friends from different ethnic (religious) groups is associated with a decrease of 0.276 (0.451) standard deviations in subjective wellbeing.
Inhibitory effect of melanin on the interaction of Fonsecaea pedrosoi with mammalian cells in vitro.

Conidial forms of Fonsecaea pedrosoi, grown under conditions where melanin was or was not synthesized, were allowed to interact with normal and cytochalasin treated macrophages. Melanin-free conidia were more infective to the macrophages. Treatment of macrophages with either cytochalasin B or D before the interaction decreased, but did not totally prevent their infection by the fungi. This inhibitory effect was higher (approximately 90%) if F. pedrosoi was grown under conditions where melanin was not synthesized. When melanin-containing conidia were used, the inhibitory effect of the cytochalasin on the infection was lower (approximately 50%). At least two mechanisms of infection of the host cell were observed: typical phagocytosis and another process in which the fungi played a more active role. Infection by F.pedrosoi was also observed in the non-professional phagocytic MDCK epithelial cell line. Two types of cytoplasmic vacuoles which contained parasites were seen in thin sections of host cells infected with F.pedrosoi: a 'tight' type and a 'loose' type. At least 200 conidia-containing vacuoles were analysed by transmission electron microscopy. The 'tight' type was observed in 75% of the vacuoles of non-treated macrophages, suggesting an association with classical phagocytosis. On the other hand, the 'loose' type vacuole was seen in 75% of the vacuoles present in cytochalasin treated macrophages and seemed to be related to induced phagocytosis or active penetration by the fungi.
Novel resistance to Cydia pomonella granulovirus (CpGV) in codling moth shows autosomal and dominant inheritance and confers cross-resistance to different CpGV genome groups

Commercial Cydia pomonella granulovirus (CpGV) products have been successfully applied to control codling moth (CM) in organic and integrated fruit production for more than 30 years. Since 2005, resistance against the widely used isolate CpGV-M has been reported from different countries in Europe. The inheritance of this so-called type I resistance is dominant and linked to the Z chromosome. Recently, a second form (type II) of CpGV resistance in CM was reported from a field population (NRW-WE) in Germany. Type II resistance confers reduced susceptibility not only to CpGV-M but to most known CpGV isolates and it does not follow the previously described Z-linked inheritance of type I resistance. To further analyze type II resistance, two CM strains, termed CpR5M and CpR5S, were generated from parental NRW-WE by repeated mass crosses and selection using the two isolates CpGV-M and CpGV-S, respectively. Both CpR5M and CpR5S were considered to be genetically homogeneous for the presence of the resistance allele(s). By crossing and backcrossing experiments with a susceptible CM strain, followed by resistance testing of the offspring, an autosomal dominant inheritance of resistance was elucidated. In addition, cross-resistance to CpGV-M and CpGV-S was detected in both strains, CpR5M and CpR5S. To test the hypothesis that the autosomal inheritance of type II resistance was caused by a large interchromosomal rearrangement involving the Z chromosome, making type I resistance appear to be autosomal in these strains; fluorescence in situ hybridization with bacterial artificial chromosome probes (BAC-FISH) was used to physically map the Z chromosomes of different CM strains. Conserved synteny of the Z-linked genes in CpR5M and other CM strains rejects this hypothesis and argues for a novel genetic and functional mode of resistance in CM populations with type II resistance.
Exact Inference In Robust Econometrics under Heteroscedasticity

The paper is devoted to the least weighted squares estimator, which is one of highly robust estimators for the linear regression model. Novel tests of heteroscedasticity are proposed, which have the form of a permutation Goldfeld-Quandt test and a permutation Breusch-Pagan test. Moreover, the asymptotic behavior of these permutation tests is investigated. Newly formulated theorems study the convergence of the tests to asymptotic tests based on the least weighted squares as well as to the test based on the least squares. A numerical experiment on a real economic data set on gross domestic product is presented, which also shows how to perform a robust prediction model under heteroscedasticity. The results are very different from those obtained with a standard estimation procedure. Various tests yield however rather similar results. Thus, taking the heteroscedasticity into account is very desirable, while the choice of a particular testing or estimation approach is not so crucial. Theoretical results may be simply extended to the context of multivariate quantiles.
Decoupling: A Key Fantasy of the Post-2015 Sustainable Development Agenda

Abstract Central to the United Nations’ post-2015 development agenda grounded in the Sustainable Development Goals is the notion of ‘decoupling’: the need to divorce economic growth from its ecological impact. For proponents, decoupling entails increasing the efficiency with which value is derived from natural resources in order to reconcile indefinite economic growth with environmental sustainability. However, even advocates admit that the idea of decoupling remains poorly conceptualized and subject to scant empirical investigation. This persistent commitment to a highly questionable idea suggests the possibility of a deeper psychological dynamic at work here. Drawing on Lacanian psychoanalytic theory, in this article we therefore analyze decoupling as a ‘fantasy’ that functions to obfuscate fundamental tensions among the goals of poverty alleviation, environmental sustainability, and profitable enterprise that it is intended to reconcile. In this way, decoupling serves to sustain faith in the possibility of attaining sustainable development within the context of a neoliberal capitalist economy that necessitates continual growth to confront inherent contradictions.
Improved delay-range-dependent stability criteria for continuous linear systems with time-varying delay

This paper provides a new delay-range-dependent criterion for continuous linear systems with time-varying delay. By using reciprocally convex combination method, a tighter upper bound of the derivative of Lyapunov functional can be obtained, and thus the proposed criterion give results with less conservatism compared with some previous ones. Illustrative examples are given to show the advantages of the proposed results.
Does Female Labor Scarcity Encourage Innovation?: Evidence from China's Gender Imbalance

Facing scarcity of a production factor, a firm can develop technologies to either substitute the scarce factor (price effect) or complement the more abundant factors (market size effect). Whether the market size effect or the price effect dominates largely depends on the elasticity of substitution among factors according to the theory of directed technical change. However, it is a great challenge to empirically test the theory because factor prices are often endogenously determined. In this paper, we use imbalanced sex ratios across Chinese provinces as a source of identification strategy to test how female labor scarcity affects corporate innovation based on the matched dataset of annual surveys of industrial firms in China and the national patent database. In regions with a large male population, female-intensive industries face more serious problems finding female workers than their male-intensive counterparts. We find that such female shortages have spurred firms in female-intensive industries to innovate more. The pattern is much more evident in industries with low substitution between female and male workers than in those with high substitution, consistent with the predictions of directed technical change theory.
MSMEs Productivity in Nigeria

This study uses the World bank enterprise survey data for Nigeria to examines Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) productivity rate in the Nigerian economy. The study explores factors that constrain MSMES output growth in Nigeria. Some of the factors identified include huge infrastructural gap, inadequate institutional support and low access to credit. The resultant effect is a low investment commitment amongst MSMEs thus hampering the productivity of MSMEs in the Nigerian economy. The MSMEs productivity growth rate was measured using annual sales of firms from the World bank enterprise survey data for Nigeria. This research employs the non-parametric variance estimation using the locally-weighted scatterplot smoothing (LOWESS) method on three sets of two-points data (2006 and 2003, 2008 and 2002, and finally 2012 and 2009) of annual fiscal sales for each category of firms comprising micro, small, medium and large firms. The result shows that the small businesses have a negative productivity growth rate in Nigeria. This in line with IFC (2013) which found that small businesses have the least productivity growth rate amongst firms of all sizes. However, this study departs from IFC findings which states that small businessesâ€™ low productivity growth rate is tenable across all the sectors of the economy. The study found that small businesses actually recorded high productivity growth rate in some subsectors of the economy that specializes in product customization such as garment and furniture. Therefore, this study validates the flexible specialization theory that emphases the economic importance of MSMEs in the post-industrial era where product customization is the new order of production. The policy implication of this study is that any targeted intervention in the MSMEs sub-sector of the economy designed to increase productivity, should be channeled into the subsector with the most employee specialization as well as product customization.Keyword(s): MSMEs, small business, Output, Productivity, JEL Classifications: P42 M13 O55
[Minocycline hydrochloride liposome controlled-release gel improves rat experimental periodontitis].

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the therapeutic effects of 2% minocycline hydrochloride liposome controlled-release gel on the periodontitis in an established rat periodontitis model. METHODS Biocompatibility was tested by oral perfusion sample solution for long-term observation. Minocycline hydrochloride liposome controlled-release gel was utilized to treat the established rat periodontitis model. The rats were selected randomly and divided into three groups: group A (PERIO-treated group), group B (minocycline hydrochloride liposome controlled-release gel treated group), and group C (negative control group). The gingival index (GI) and probing depth (PD) were detected, and the number of mononuclear and broken bone cells were examined after 7, 14, 28, and 56 d. RESULTS The minocycline hydrochloride liposome controlled-release gel exhibited excellent biocompatibility based on weight measure and tissue section evaluation. The rats with periodontitis demonstrated that GI, PD, and the number of mononuclear and broken bone cells of group B decreased in 14, 28, and 56 d. Pathological observation showed that new bones and fibers were formed in group B. CONCLUSION Minocycline hydrochloride liposome controlled-release gel improves rat periodontitis, thereby providing valuable evidence for clinical application.
Antiproliferative activity of Vallaris glabra Kuntze (Apocynaceae)

Background: Our earlier study on the antiproliferative (APF) activity of leaf extracts of ten Apocynaceae species showed that leaves of Vallaris glabra possessed strong and broad-spectrum properties. Materials and Methods: In this study, sequential extracts of leaves, flowers and stems, and fractions and isolated compounds from dichloromethane (DCM) leaf extract of V. glabra were assessed for APF activity using the sulphorhodamine B (SRB) assay. Apoptotic effect of MDA-MB-231 cancer cells treated with DCM leaf extract of V. glabra was studied using Hoechst 33342 dye and caspase colorimetry. Results: Both DCM extracts of leaves and flowers possessed broad-spectrum APF activity against HT-29, MCF-7, MDA-MB-231 and SKOV-3 cancer cells. From DCM leaf extract, stearic acid (SA) and ursolic acid (UA) were isolated by column chromatography, and identified by NMR and MS analyses. APF activity of SA from DCM leaf extract displayed weak inhibitory activity and scientific literature showed UA has anticancer properties against those cancer cells used in this study. MDA-MB-231 cancer cells treated with DCM leaf extract and stained with Hoechst 33342 dye provided evidence that the extract had an apoptotic effect on the cells. Caspase colorimetry showed that the apoptotic effect involved activation of caspase-8, -9 and -3, but not caspase-6. Conclusion: The potential of V. glabra as a candidate species for anticancer drugs warrants further investigation.