Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Strategies for Cancer Vaccine Development

Treating cancer with vaccines has been a challenging field of investigation since the 1950s. Over the years, the lack of effective active immunotherapies has led to the development of numerous novel strategies. However, the use of therapeutic cancer vaccines may be on the verge of becoming an effective modality. Recent phase II/III clinical trials have achieved hopeful results in terms of overall survival. Yet despite these encouraging successes, in general, very little is known about the basic immunological mechanisms involved in vaccine immunotherapy. Gaining a better understanding of the mechanisms that govern the specific immune responses (i.e., cytotoxic T lymphocytes, CD4 T helper cells, T regulatory cells, cells of innate immunity, tumor escape mechanisms) elicited by each of the various vaccine platforms should be a concern of cancer vaccine clinical trials, along with clinical benefits. This review focuses on current strategies employed by recent clinical trials of therapeutic cancer vaccines and analyzes them both clinically and immunologically.
An empirical Bayes approach to polynomial regression under order restrictions

SUMMARY An unknown polynomial is to be estimated over a finite interval from N independent, normally distributed observations. A prior distribution is placed on the polynomial coefficients expressing the opinion that the coefficients decrease in absolute value as the degree of the corresponding terms increase. The data are used to estimate the parameters in the prior distribution of the coefficients. A Monte Carlo study is presented which compares the proposed method with the lack-of-fit procedure. This study indicates that the proposed method performs well in terms of minimizing a squared error loss as well as in yielding the correct degree of the polynomial being estimated.
Beta(2)-adrenergic receptor lacking the cyclic AMP-dependent protein kinase consensus sites fully activates extracellular signal-regulated kinase 1/2 in human embryonic kidney 293 cells: lack of evidence for G(s)/G(i) switching.

Stimulation of the beta(2)-adrenergic receptor (beta(2)AR) in human embryonic kidney (HEK) 293 cells causes a transient activation of Extracellular Signal-Regulated Kinase (ERK) 1/2. One of the mechanisms proposed for this activation is a PKA-mediated phosphorylation of the beta(2)AR that switches receptor coupling from G(s) to G(i) and triggers internalization of the receptor. To examine these phenomena, we characterized agonist activation of ERK1/2 in HEK293 cells by the endogenous beta(2)AR and in HEK293 cells stably overexpressing either the wild-type beta(2)AR or a substitution mutant beta(2)AR (PKA(-)) that lacks the cyclic AMP-dependent protein kinase (PKA) consensus phosphorylation sites (S261A, S262A and S345A, S346A). As the baseline, we established that epinephrine stimulation of the endogenous beta(2)AR in HEK293 cells (20-30 fmol/mg) caused a rapid and transient activation of ERK1/2 with an EC(50) of 5 to 6 nM. In contrast, the potency of epinephrine stimulation of ERK1/2 in cells stably overexpressing WTbeta(2)AR and PKA(-) (2-4 pmol of beta(2)AR/mg) was increased by over 100-fold relative to HEK293 cells, the EC(50) values being 20 to 60 pM. The nearly identical 100-fold shift in EC(50) for ERK1/2 activation in the PKA(-) and WTbeta(2)AR relative to that in the HEK293 showed that the PKA(-) are fully capable of activating ERK1/2. We also found maximal activation of ERK1/2 in the overexpressing cell lines at concentrations of epinephrine that cause no internalization (i.e., the EC(50) for internalization was 75 nM). Pertussis toxin pretreatment caused only a weak inhibition of epinephrine activation of ERK1/2 in the HEK293 (7-16%) and no inhibition in the PKA(-) cells. Finally we found that the Src family kinase inhibitor 4-amino-5-(4-chlorophenyl)-7-(t-butyl)pyrazolo[3,4-d]pyrimidine (10 microM) caused a >90% inhibition of epinephrine or forskolin activation of ERK1/2 in both cell lines. Our results indicate that the dominant mechanism of beta(2)AR activation of ERK1/2 does not require PKA phosphorylation of the beta(2)AR, receptor internalization or switching from activation of G(s) to G(i) but clearly requires activation of a Src family member that may be downstream of PKA.
Weighted sparse recovery with expanders

We derived the first sparse recovery guarantees for weighted l1 minimization with sparse random matrices and the class of weighted sparse signals, using a weighted versions of the null space property to derive these guarantees. These sparse matrices from expender graphs can be applied very fast and have other better computational complexities than their dense counterparts. In addition we show that, using such sparse matrices, weighted sparse recovery with weighted l1 minimization leads to sample complexities that are linear in the weighted sparsity of the signal and these sampling rates can be smaller than those of standard sparse recovery. Moreover, these results reduce to known results in standard sparse recovery and sparse recovery with prior information and the results are supported by numerical experiments.
A semantic environment model for crowd simulation in multilayered complex environment

Simulating crowds in complex environment is fascinating and challenging, however, modeling of the environment is always neglected in the past, which is one of the essential problems in crowd simulation especially for multilayered complex environment. This paper presents a semantic model for representing the complex environment, where the semantic information is described with a three-tier framework: a geometric level, a semantic level and an application level. Each level contains different maps for different purposes and our approach greatly facilitates the interactions between individuals and virtual environment. And then a modified continuum crowd method is designed to fit the proposed virtual environment model so that realistic behaviors of large dense crowds could be simulated in multilayered complex environments such as buildings and subway stations. Finally, we implement this method and test it in two complex synthetic urban spaces. The experiment results demonstrate that the semantic environment model can provide sufficient and accurate information for crowd simulation in multilayered complex environment.
The Effect of Increased Employer Contacts within a Labour Market Training Program

Using both register and survey data, two types of labour market training programs are compared. One program is part of the regular Swedish labour market training and the other, Swit, was initiated as an experiment during a two-year period, in an attempt to solve a bottleneck problem with people working with information technology. Enrolling in Swit increases the chances of finding employment by 20 percent, as compared to entering the conventional program, directed towards IT. The difference is due to the positive effect of more practical experience within Swit, which is especially large for individuals with a weak position on the labour market.
On the X-ray fast-time variability of Sco X-2 ( GX 349+2 )

We have analysed archived Ginga data on the Z source Sco X-2 (GX 349+2). We present the rst detailed investigation of its X-ray fast-time variability, as a function of position in the Z track. During the two-day observation over the period 5{7 March 1989, the source was in the so-called flaring branch, and the lower part of the so-called normal branch. We found broad peaked noise with a centroid frequency and width of4{7 Hz and 6{12 Hz respectively. The peaked noise was strongest in the lower flaring branch, with a maximum fractional rms amplitude of3%. We conclude that it is not a manifestation of atoll source high frequency noise, as had been suggested, and compare it with the power spectral features seen in other Z sources. We nd that the peaked noise is markedly dierent to the quasi-periodic oscillations found in the normal and flaring branches of Sco X-1; however it bears some resemblance to that seen in the flaring branch of Cyg X-2 at low overall intensities.
Complexity Attack Resistant Flow Lookup Schemes for IPv6: A Measurement Based Comparison

In this paper we look at the problem of choosing a good flow statelookup scheme for IPv6 firewalls. We want to choose a scheme whichis fast when dealing with typical traffic, but whose performancewill not degrade unnecessarily when subject to a complexity attack.We demonstrate the existing problem and, using captured traffic,assess a number of replacement schemes that are hash and tree based.Our aim is to improve FreeBSD's ipfw firewall, and so finally weimplement the most promising replacement schemes. We show that eventhough they are more costly computationally, they do not noticeablydegrade IPv6 forwarding performance.
A Decentralized Sleep Mechanism in Heterogeneous Cellular Networks With QoS Constraints

We introduce a sleep mechanism for energy efficiency in heterogeneous cellular networks, where macro base stations and small base stations coexist in the same frequency band. The strategy is to put high-power macro base stations into sleep mode and off-load the users to low-power small base stations or neighboring macro base stations. To do so, we first formulate a joint optimization problem to minimize the total energy consumption while maintaining the QoS of users. Then we decouple it into two subproblems: user association and resource allocation, and macro base station sleep mechanism. We propose a modified many-to-one matching algorithm to solve the first one and a voting-based dynamic sleep mechanism for the second one. Simulation results show that our scheme has both lower energy consumption and lower user blocking ratio compared with existing sleep mechanisms.
Influence of Rotation Increments on Imaging Performance for a Rotatory Dual-Head PET System

For a rotatory dual-head positron emission tomography (PET) system, how to determine the rotation increments is an open problem. In this study, we simulated the characteristics of a rotatory dual-head PET system. The influences of different rotation increments were compared and analyzed. Based on this simulation, the imaging performance of a prototype system was verified. A reconstruction flowchart was proposed based on a precalculated system response matrix (SRM). The SRM made the relationships between the voxels and lines of response (LORs) fixed; therefore, we added the interpolation method into the flowchart. Five metrics, including spatial resolution, normalized mean squared error (NMSE), peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR), contrast-to-noise (CNR), and structure similarity (SSIM), were applied to assess the reconstructed image quality. The results indicated that the 60° rotation increments with the bilinear interpolation had advantages in resolution, PSNR, NMSE, and SSIM. In terms of CNR, the 90° rotation increments were better than other increments. In addition, the reconstructed images of 90° rotation increments were also flatter than that of 60° increments. Therefore, both the 60° and 90° rotation increments could be used in the real experiments, and which one to choose may depend on the application requirement.
A method to calculate transient characteristics of synchronous reluctance motors considering iron loss and cross-magnetic saturation

This paper presents a method to calculate the transient characteristics of synchronous reluctance motor (SynRM). Using an approximate equation suitable for expressing d- and q-axes inductance variation, the authors derive a nonlinear state equation considering both iron loss and cross-magnetic saturation. All electrical motor parameters used for the calculation are measured from tests. Calculation results on transient and steady-state characteristics of a vector-controlled flux-barrier type 1.1-kW SynRM are verified with experimental results.
Excess Salt Increases Infarct Size Produced by Photothrombotic Distal Middle Cerebral Artery Occlusion in Spontaneously Hypertensive Rats

Cerebral circulation is known to be vulnerable to high salt loading. However, no study has investigated the effects of excess salt on focal ischemic brain injury. After 14 days of salt loading (0.9% saline) or water, spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHR) and normotensive Wistar-Kyoto rats (WKY) were subjected to photothrombotic middle cerebral artery occlusion (MCAO), and infarct volume was determined at 48 h after MCAO: albumin and hemoglobin contents in discrete brain regions were also determined in SHR. Salt loading did not affect blood pressure levels in SHR and WKY. After MCAO, regional cerebral blood flow (CBF), determined with two ways of laser-Doppler flowmetry (one-point measurement or manual scanning), was more steeply decreased in the salt-loaded group than in the control group. In SHR/Izm, infarct volume in the salt-loaded group was 112±27 mm3, which was significantly larger than 77±12 mm3 in the control group (p = 0.002), while the extents of blood-brain barrier disruption (brain albumin and hemoglobin levels) were not affected by excess salt. In WKY, salt loading did not significantly increase infarct size. These results show the detrimental effects of salt loading on intra-ischemic CBF and subsequent brain infarction produced by phototrhombotic MCAO in hypertensive rats.
Phenotypic characterization of nosocomial isolates of Staphylococcus aureus with reference to MRSA.

BACKGROUND Apart from being a major cause of mortality, nosocomial infections due to Staphylococcus aureus have been imposing a burden on patients, hospitals and health care systems. The present study was designed to determine the prevalence of methicillin resistant S. aureus (MRSA) among nosocomial isolates along with their phenotypic characterization. METHODOLOGY MRSA and methicillin sensitive S. aureus (MSSA) were determined by performing four different tests viz: disc diffusion, oxacillin screen agar test, MRSA latex agglutination test, and MIC of oxacillin by E test. RESULTS Of the 149 S. aureus nosocomial isolates, 44.9% were MRSA, which included 82.1% of homogeneous MRSA and 17.9% of heterogeneous MRSA. Association of MRSA infection was found to be significantly higher in skin and lower respiratory tract infections. Of the MRSA isolates, 65 were multiresistant oxacillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MORSA) and 2 were nonmultiresistant oxacillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus (NORSA). D tests performed on 136 isolates showed that Inducible macrolide-lincosamide-streptogramin B (MLSB) and constitutive MLSB resistance were found to be associated with MRSA. On the contrary, susceptibility to both erythromycin and clindamycin was found to be associated with MSSA. However, MSB (macrolide-streptogramin B) resistance was not found associated either with MRSA or MSSA. Furthermore, both inducible and constitutive MLSB were found to be associated with only homogenous MRSA. CONCLUSION D tests may be made mandatory in all S. aureus isolates as inducible MLSB resistance cannot be detected in routine susceptibility test unless erythromycin and clindamycin are placed 15-26 mm apart.
An Online Structural Plasticity Rule for Generating Better Reservoirs

Abstract In this letter, we propose a novel neuro-inspired low-resolution online unsupervised learning rule to train the reservoir or liquid of liquid state machines. The liquid is a sparsely interconnected huge recurrent network of spiking neurons. The proposed learning rule is inspired from structural plasticity and trains the liquid through formating and eliminating synaptic connections. Hence, the learning involves rewiring of the reservoir connections similar to structural plasticity observed in biological neural networks. The network connections can be stored as a connection matrix and updated in memory by using address event representation (AER) protocols, which are generally employed in neuromorphic systems. On investigating the pairwise separation property, we find that trained liquids provide 1.36 0.18 times more interclass separation while retaining similar intraclass separation as compared to random liquids. Moreover, analysis of the linear separation property reveals that trained liquids are 2.05 0.27 times better than random liquids. Furthermore, we show that our liquids are able to retain the generalization ability and generality of random liquids. A memory analysis shows that trained liquids have 83.67 5.79 ms longer fading memory than random liquids, which have shown 92.8 5.03 ms fading memory for a particular type of spike train inputs. We also throw some light on the dynamics of the evolution of recurrent connections within the liquid. Moreover, compared to separation-driven synaptic modification', a recently proposed algorithm for iteratively refining reservoirs, our learning rule provides 9.30%, 15.21%, and 12.52% more liquid separations and 2.8%, 9.1%, and 7.9% better classification accuracies for 4, 8, and 12 class pattern recognition tasks, respectively.
Modeling of component-based adaptive distributed applications

A challenge in distributed system design is to cope with the dynamic nature of the execution environment. In this paper, we present an approach for modeling adaptation of component based distributed applications. The approach supports component-based design of different variants of the applications, and a framework for selecting proper variants based on the current state of the execution environment and the user preferences. XML is used as the specification language. Transformation of the XML based design specifications to programming languages like Java is also discussed.
The PduQ Enzyme Is an Alcohol Dehydrogenase Used to Recycle NAD+ Internally within the Pdu Microcompartment of Salmonella enterica

Salmonella enterica uses a bacterial microcompartment (MCP) for coenzyme B12-dependent 1,2-propanediol (1,2-PD) utilization (Pdu). The Pdu MCP consists of a protein shell that encapsulates enzymes and cofactors required for metabolizing 1,2-PD as a carbon and energy source. Here we show that the PduQ protein of S. enterica is an iron-dependent alcohol dehydrogenase used for 1,2-PD catabolism. PduQ is also demonstrated to be a new component of the Pdu MCP. In addition, a series of in vivo and in vitro studies show that a primary function of PduQ is to recycle NADH to NAD+ internally within the Pdu MCP in order to supply propionaldehyde dehydrogenase (PduP) with its required cofactor (NAD+). Genetic tests determined that a pduQ deletion mutant grew slower than wild-type Salmonella on 1,2-PD and that this phenotype was not complemented by a non-MCP associated Adh2 from Zymomonas that catalyzes the same reaction. This suggests that PduQ has a MCP-specific function. We also found that a pduQ deletion mutant had no growth defect in a genetic background having a second mutation that prevents MCP formation which further supports a MCP-specific role for PduQ. Moreover, studies with purified Pdu MCPs demonstrated that the PduQ enzyme can convert NADH to NAD+ to supply the PduP reaction in vitro. Cumulatively, these studies show that the PduQ enzyme is used to recycle NADH to NAD+ internally within the Pdu MCP. To our knowledge, this is the first report of internal recycling as a mechanism for cofactor homeostasis within a bacterial MCP.
The Work of Restructuring Schools: Building from the Ground Up.

The contributors to this work, including Betty Lou Whitford, Rodman B. Webb and Linda Darling-Hammond, tell a set of stories about real schools, teachers and administrators who face district and state mandates concerning restructuring. It describes the trials and tribulations that they encounter and offers an insight into the lessons that can be learned from these individual experiences. This book provides educators and university faculty with a source guide of compelling case studies and analyses in which readers can see themselves and their contexts (or not) and learn lessons in the restructuring movement that the schools in this book had to learn for themselves. This text is intended for: educational researchers; administrators; policy makers; teachers; union leaders and students of school reform and improvement.
"Meme-Spirited”: I. The VAPUS Model for Understanding the Prevalence and Potency of Ghost Narratives.

Abstract: A review of nearly 20 years of sociocultural research and trends on “ghostly episodes” (ghosts, haunted houses, and poltergeists) suggests that personal accounts, group investigations, and popular depictions of anomalous experiences function as active, meaningful, and potent cultural memes. These, in part, reflect interpersonal or group dynamics grounded in Durkheimian models, as well as Social Identity and Conflict theories. Expanding on and integrating these themes, this paper provides a general framework that explains the enduring popularity of ghost narratives in terms of their versatility, adaptability, participatory nature, universality, and scalability (VAPUS model). This perspective implies that ghostly episodes, as experiences and narratives, embody and exemplify the marketing concepts of “brand personality” and consumer engagement. Accordingly, social and cultural influences are discussed as important and inherent contextual variables that help to produce, promote, shape, and sustain these narratives.
Magnetic Microactuation Of Torsional Polysilicon Structures

A microactuator technology utilizing magnetic thin films and polysilicon flexures is applied to torsional micro structures. These structures are constructed in a batch-fabrication process that combines electroplating with conventional IC-lithography, materials, and equipment. A microactuated mirror made from a 430 x 130 x l5 /spl mu/m/sup 3/ nickel-iron plate attached to a pair of 400 x 2.2 x 2.2 /spl mu/m/sup 3/ polysilicon torsional beams has been rotated more than 90/spl deg/ out of the plane of the wafer and actuated with a torque greater than 3.0 nN-m. The torsional flexure structure constrains motion to rotation about a single axis which can be an advantage for a number of microphotonic applications (e.g., beam chopping, scanning, and steering).
Grape berry calibration by computer vision using elliptical model fitting

Dans le cadre de la gestion viti-vinicole, les producteurs sont demandeurs de nouveaux outils pour estimer le stade de croissance et le potentiel qualitatif des grappes. Plusieurs etudes montrent l'importance de la taille des baies en tant qu'indicateur de qualite. Ce papier propose une methode de vision numerique pour estimer la taille des baies a partir d'images acquises au champ. L'objectif est de retrouver le profil de toutes les baies visibles sur la grappe, y compris celles qui sont partiellement occultees. Un modele de type ellipse est utilise pour retrouver la forme complete des baies a partir de leurs contours visibles. La methode combine une premiere etape de detection et nettoyage des contours basee sur l'algorithme de partage des eaux, et un algorithme d'ajustement d'ellipse par moindres carres. / In the frame of vineyard and wine process management, producers are looking for novel tools to estimate the growth stage and potential quality of vine grapes. Several studies show the importance of the berry size as a growing and quality indicator. This paper proposes an image processing method to estimate the berry size of vine grapes by image acquisition in the field. The goal is to recover the profile of each visible berry in the grape, including partially occluded ones. In the present approach, an elliptical contour model is used to recover the complete shape of each berry from its visible edges. This method combines a primary edge detection and cleaning process based on a watershed algorithm, and a direct least square ellipse fitting algorithm.