Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Send Orders of Reprints at Reprints@benthamscience.net an Influenza Virus M2 Protein Specific Chimeric Antigen Receptor Modulates Influenza A/wsn/33 H1n1 Infection in Vivo

A potential target for the development of universal vaccine strategies against Influenza A is the M2 protein-a membrane protein with a highly conserved extracellular domain. In this study we developed engineered T-cell receptors, by fusing M2-specific antibody sequences with T-cell receptor transmembrane and signaling domains to target influenza infected cells. When expressed on T-cells, these novel T-cell receptors (chimeric antigen receptors-CARs) are able to recognize specific antigens on the surface of target cells via an MHC-independent mechanism. Using an existing monoclonal antibody (14C2) specific for the M2 ectodomain (M2e), we generated an M2-specific CAR. We tested the specificity of this M2 CAR in vitro by measuring the activation of T-cells in response to M2-specific peptides or M2-expressing cell lines. Both Jurkat T-cells and peripheral blood mononuclear cells expressing the M2-specific CAR responded to specific antigen stimulation by upregulating NFAT and producing-interferon. To test whether the M2-specific CAR are effective at recognizing influenza infected cells in vivo we used an established BALB/c murine infection model. At day 4 post-infection, when M2 CAR expressing splenocytes could be detected in the lung, the Influenza A/WSN/33 virus titre was around 50% of that in control mice. Although the lung virus titre later increased in the treated group, virus was cleared in both groups of mice by day 8. The results provide support for the development of M2e as a target for cell mediated immunotherapy.
Smoothed local histogram filters

Local image histograms contain a great deal of information useful for applications in computer graphics, computer vision and computational photography. Making use of that information has been challenging because of the expense of computing histogram properties over large neighborhoods. Efficient algorithms exist for some specific computations like the bilateral filter, but not others. Here, we present an efficient and practical method for computing accurate derivatives and integrals of locally-weighted histograms over large neighborhoods. The method allows us to compute the location, height, width and integral of all local histogram modes at interactive rates. Among other things, it enables the first constant-time isotropic median filter, robust isotropic image morphology operators, an efficient "dominant mode" filter and a non-iterative alternative to the mean shift. In addition, we present a method to combat the over-sharpening that is typical of histogram-based edge-preserving smoothing. This post-processing step should make histogram-based filters not only fast and efficient, but also suitable for a variety of new applications.
Handbook of imagination and mental simulation

For L2 researchers who are intrigued by mental simulation and who endeavour to promote this innovative technique in the classroom, this handbook is an excellent resource of background information. This book is a comprehensive collection of writings exploring the topic of ‘mental simulation’ from the perspectives of neuroscience, developmental psychology, cognitive psychology, social psychology and clinical psychology. Although the handbook is not tailor-made for L2 researchers, it contains ample key theories and information for those who would like to incorporate mental simulation into L2 research. As this review will mainly focus on how the handbook contributes to the field of L2 motivation, I shall group the chapters and consider them as they relate to three areas: (1) mental simulation and motivation; (2) mental simulation, memory and action representation; and (3) other related issues.
Representativeness and Elections: A Policy Analysis

This paper looks at representativeness in terms of policy dimensions. As previous studies also have demonstrated, the analysis provides evidence that the level of policy agreement varies across policy domains. The policy linkage is weak on questions of taxation and government administration. Only on contemporary liberalism does the level of policy agreement begin to meet the standards of representational theory. The occurrence of elections is found to be a particularly important determinant of legislative voting vis-à-vis constituency preferences. California senators, elected for four-year terms, are undeniably unrepresentative to direct opinion during the first three years of their terms; representativeness increases dramatically during the final year. Senators facing the possibility of having their reelection fortunes adversely affected by a presidential campaign are particularly attuned to district opinion during the final year of their terms. Assemblymen, who are elected for two-year terms, are attuned to the wishes of their constituencies throughout their terms. As the Founding Fathers believed, the frequency of elections conditions representatives' loyalty to the preferences of the represented.
Novel Implementation of Average Current Mode Controlled Power-Factor-Correction Converters

This paper presents a novel current sensing implementation of average current mode control of power factor correction (PFC) converters. Instead of sensing the average inductor current from the return path, a simple RC peak voltage detector circuit is used to derive the required average current signal from the main switch for the controller. This reconstructed signal attains close value to the true average current of the inductor to achieve high power factor. As a result, the power dissipation through the sensing device is reduced. It also improves the stability of converter modules which are connected in parallel. Simulation results of a boost PFC converter are given to confirm the effectiveness of the proposed approach.
Confronting Strategic Inertia in a Top Management Team: Learning from Failure

Recently there has been a growing interest in the use of scenario-planning techniques and related procedures such as cognitive mapping as a basis for facilitating organizational learning and strategic renewal. The overwhelming impression conveyed within the popular management literature is that the application of these techniques invariably leads to successful outcomes. To the extent that this is not the case, the absence of documented accounts of instances where these techniques have failed may mislead would-be users into embarking on inappropriate courses of action, unaware of their fundamental limitations. In keeping with a number of recent calls to make organizational research and management theory more relevant to the world of practice, we present a reflective account of our own (largely unsuccessful) attempt to apply these potentially powerful methods of intervention in the context of a private sector organization. Drawing on the rich seam of qualitative data gathered over the course of our work with the senior management team of the organization concerned, we explore the reasons why our attempts to utilize these methods did not yield the benefits anticipated. The data are analyzed using Janis and Mann's (1977) Conflict Theory of Decision Making. It is argued that the primary reason why our process intervention failed is that the participants adopted a series of defensive avoidance strategies, amplified by a series of psychodynamic processes initiated by the Chief Executive Officer (CEO). We contend that these defensive avoidance strategies served as a means of coping with the unacceptably high levels of decisional stress, which arose as a result of having to confront a variety of alternatives, each with potentially threatening consequences for the longterm wellbeing of the organization.
The Actors of Human Implantation: Gametes, Embryo, Endometrium

The success of pregnancy depends on a receptive endometrium, a normal blastocyst, a synchronized cross-talk at the maternal–fetal interface at the time of implantation, and finally a successful placentation and remodeling of uterine vasculature. In routine, less than 5% of oocytes collected in in vitro fertilization (IVF) cycles and only 20 to 25% of embryos transferred lead to a birth. Implantation and placentation processes remain the black box of fertility, involving following steps: fertilization, endometrial receptivity, embryo implantation (apposition-adhesion-invasion), trophoblastic differentiation and invasion (Cartwright et al., 2010).
Supporting newcomers in software development projects

The recent and fast expansion of OSS (Open-source software) communities has fostered research on how open source projects evolve and how their communities interact. Several research studies show that the inflow of new developers plays an important role in the longevity and the success of OSS projects. Beside that they also discovered that an high percentage of newcomers tend to leave the project because of the socio-technical barriers they meet when they join the project. However, such research effort did not generate yet concrete results in support retention and training of project newcomers. In this thesis dissertation we investigated problems arising when newcomers join software projects, and possible solutions to support them. Specifically, we studied (i) how newcomers behave during development activities and how they interact with others developers with the aim at (ii) developing tools and/or techniques for supporting them during the integration in the development team. Thus, among the various recommenders, we defined (i) a tool able to suggest appropriate mentors to newcomers during the training stage; then, with the aim at supporting newcomers during program comprehension we defined other two recommenders: A tool that (ii) generates high quality source code summaries and another tool able to (iii) provide descriptions of specific source code elements. For future work, we plan to improve the proposed recommenders and to integrate other kind of recommenders to better support newcomers in OSS projects.
MACH: my automated conversation coach

MACH--My Automated Conversation coacH--is a novel system that provides ubiquitous access to social skills training. The system includes a virtual agent that reads facial expressions, speech, and prosody and responds with verbal and nonverbal behaviors in real time. This paper presents an application of MACH in the context of training for job interviews. During the training, MACH asks interview questions, automatically mimics certain behavior issued by the user, and exhibit appropriate nonverbal behaviors. Following the interaction, MACH provides visual feedback on the user's performance. The development of this application draws on data from 28 interview sessions, involving employment-seeking students and career counselors. The effectiveness of MACH was assessed through a weeklong trial with 90 MIT undergraduates. Students who interacted with MACH were rated by human experts to have improved in overall interview performance, while the ratings of students in control groups did not improve. Post-experiment interviews indicate that participants found the interview experience informative about their behaviors and expressed interest in using MACH in the future.
Improved sample preparation method for glycan analysis of glycoproteins by CE‐LIF and CE‐MS

CE is a high‐resolution separation technique broadly used in the biotechnology industry for carbohydrate analysis. The standard sample preparation protocol for CE analysis of glycans released from glycoproteins generally requires derivatization times of overnight at 37°C, using ≥100 fold excess of fluorophore reagent, 8‐aminopyrene‐1,3,6‐trisulfonic‐acid, if the sample is unknown, or it is a regulated biotherapeutic product, possibly containing terminal sialic acid(s). In this paper, we report on significant improvements for the standard CE sample preparation method of glycan analysis. By replacing the conventionally used acetic acid catalyst with citric acid, as low as 1:10 glycan to fluorophore molar ratio (versus the typical 1:≥100 ratio) maintained the >95% derivatization yield at 55°C with only 50 min reaction time. Terminal sialic acid loss was negligible at 55°C during the derivatization process, and indicating that the kinetics of labeling at 55°C was faster than the loss of sialic acid from the glycan. The reduced relative level of 8‐aminopyrene‐1,3,6‐trisulfonic‐acid simplified the removal of excess reagent, important in both CE‐LIF (electrokinetic injection bias) and CE‐MS (ion suppression). Coupling CE‐ ESI‐MS confirmed that the individual peaks separated by CE corresponded to single glycans and increased the confidence of structural assignment based on glucose unit values.
Filtering Email Spam in the Presence of Noisy User Feedback

Recent email spam filtering evaluations, such as those conducted at TREC, have shown that near-perfect filtering results are attained with a variety of machine learning methods when filters are given perfectly accurate labeling feedback for training. Yet in realworld settings, labeling feedback may be far from perfect. Real users give feedback that is often mistaken, inconsistent, or even maliciously inaccurate. To our knowledge, the impact of this noisy labeling feedback on current spam filtering methods has not been previously explored in the literature. In this paper, we show that noisy feedback may harm or even break state-of-the-art spam filters, including recent TREC winners. We then propose and evaluate several approaches to make such filters robust to label noise. We find that although such modifications are effective for uniform random label noise, more realistic “natural” label noise from human users remains a difficult challenge.
Darfur and the Politicization of International Law: Genocide or Crimes against Humanity?

The humanitarian crisis in Darfur has slowly captivated international public, governmental, and media attention. With at least two million persons displaced and an estimated 400,000 killed,1 it is one of the many grave crises of failed states currently occurring within Africa. The people of the region have faced murder, displacement, rape, and banditry at the hands of the Sudanese government, the state-supported Janjaweed, and other militia groups, most notably the Sudan Liberation Army. Yet the United Nations concluded after a fact-finding mission to the region that these widespread atrocities did not constitute genocide but rather were defined as crimes against humanity. This article provides a brief overview of the background and contemporary state of the situation as well as a legal examination of the nature of genocide in international law and the United Nation Security Council's rationale for applying the label of crimes against humanity. The chief purpose of the article is to clearly differentiate the two concepts of genocide and crimes against humanity and to thoroughly examine the practical difference a definition makes.
Immersion In Another Culture: Paradoxical Experiences Considered For Teachers And Students In University Classrooms

We have worked, learned, and lived in Indonesia. These experiences prompted Roger’s PhD dissertation entitled: Expatriate Managers’ Immersion in Another Culture: A Phenomenological Study of Lived Experiences. The findings of this research uncovered eight paradoxical experiences that were lived by persons who were immersed in another culture. We have shared these paradoxes with others and have found that they, too, have experienced similar situations and feelings. We believe that these paradoxes are universal and could be viewed from the perspective of teachers in university classrooms and their students, each of whom may or may not “come from away”. By taking the opportunity to illustrate these paradoxes from individuals’ perspectives in this paper, understanding will ensue about what it is like to be immersed in another culture, thus transcending understanding -- to seeing the phenomenon (being immersed in another culture) in a new light. This insight will assist teachers and students from different cultures to feel understood and supported in classrooms.
A new multi criteria classification approach in a multi agent system applied to SEEG analysis

This work is focused on the study of the organization of the SEEG signals during epileptic seizures with multi-agent system approach. This approach is based on cooperative mechanisms of auto-organization at the micro level and of emergence of a global function at the macro level. In order to evaluate this approach we propose a distributed collaborative approach for the classification of the interesting signals. This new multi-criteria classification method is able to provide a relevant brain area structures organisation and to bring out epileptogenic networks elements. The method is compared to another classification approach a fuzzy classification and gives better results when applied to SEEG signals.
Responses to unprotected extradyadic sex by one's partner: Testing predictions from interdependence and equity theory

With a sample of 251 Dutch adults, many of whom had been involved in extradyadic sex, we examined three responses to unprotected extradyadic sex by the partner: angry retreat (anger, upset, and inclination to leave the partner), accommodation (open communication aimed at preserving the relationship), and assertiveness (demanding precautionary measures from the partner). Hypotheses were based upon interdependence theory and equity theory. A factor analysis confirmed the conceptual independence of the three responses. Women expressed more angry retreat and assertiveness but not more accommodation than men. Regression analyses showed that, controlling for various demographic variables, angry retreat was particularly found among individuals with a low intention to engage in extradyadic sex; accommodation was characteristic of those high in commitment, whereas assertiveness was especially common among those with a high intention to use condoms with new sexual partners. These results were obtained among men as .
xylP Promoter-Based Expression System and Its Use for Antisense Downregulation of the Penicillium chrysogenumNitrogen Regulator NRE

ABSTRACT A highly inducible fungal promoter derived from thePenicillium chrysogenum endoxylanase (xylP) gene is described. Northern analysis and the use of a β-glucuronidase (uidA) reporter gene strategy showed thatxylP expression is transcriptionally regulated. Xylan and xylose are efficient inducers, whereas glucose strongly represses the promoter activity. Comparison of the same expression construct as a single copy at the niaD locus in P. chrysogenumand at the argB locus in Aspergillus nidulansdemonstrated that the xylP promoter is regulated similarly in these two species but that the level of expression is about 80 times higher in the Aspergillus species. The xylPpromoter was found to be 65-fold more efficient than the isopenicillin-N-synthetase (pcbC) promoter inPenicillium and 23-fold more efficient than the nitrate reductase (niaD) promoter in Aspergillus under induced conditions. Furthermore, the xylP promoter was used for controllable antisense RNA synthesis of the nre-encoded putative major nitrogen regulator of P. chrysogenum. This approach led to inducible downregulation of the steady-state mRNA level of nre and consequently to transcriptional repression of the genes responsible for nitrate assimilation. In addition, transcription of nreB, which encodes a negative-acting nitrogen regulatory GATA factor of Penicillium, was found to be subject to regulation by NRE. Our data are the first direct evidence that nre indeed encodes an activator in the nitrogen regulatory circuit in Penicillium and indicate that cross regulation of the controlling factors occurs.
FlexMix: A general framework for finite mixture models and latent class regression in R

FlexMix implements a general framework for fitting discrete mixtures of regression models in the R statistical computing environment: three variants of the EM algorithm can be used for parameter estimation, regressors and responses may be multivariate with arbitrary dimension, data may be grouped, e.g., to account for multiple observations per individual, the usual formula interface of the S language is used for convenient model specification, and a modular concept of driver functions allows to interface many different types of regression models. Existing drivers implement mixtures of standard linear models, generalized linear models and model-based clustering. FlexMix provides the E-step and all data handling, while the M-step can be supplied by the user to easily define new models.
Shape analysis of tumor cell nuclei in ependymomas by means of Fourier analysis.

OBJECTIVE To study the prognostic significance of nuclear shape analysis in ependymomas. STUDY DESIGN Tumor cell nuclei in surgical specimens of primary resected ependymomas from 30 patients were evaluated by means of Fourier analysis of nuclear contours, conventional morphometric features (nuclear area, shape factor) and the Ki-67 proliferation index. Fourier analysis can be used for decomposing an irregular nuclear contour by calculating "Fourier amplitudes. " Tumors with different tumor grades according to the World Health Organization were compared, as were patients with and without recurrence of ependymomas. Planimetric data were further correlated with the Ki-67 index. RESULTS t Test and multivariate analysis showed distinct differences between ependymomas with tumor grade 3 and the other tumor grades. Cross-validated, stepwise discriminant analysis with the event of recurrence as grouping variable revealed correct reclassification in 16/18 cases without recurrence and of 10/12 cases with recurrence. When considering just intracranial ependymomas with total surgical removal, Fourier amplitudes provided 100% correct reclassification concerning recurrence. Proliferation index, in contrast, showed considerable overlap between all tumor grades and between cases with and without recurrence. CONCLUSION Quantification of the shape of tumor cell nuclei in ependymomas by means of Fourier analysis has prognostic significance and seems to be superior to the Ki-67 index.
Draft Genome Sequences of Eight Obligate Methane Oxidizers Occupying Distinct Niches Based on Their Nitrogen Metabolism

ABSTRACT The genome sequences of Methylomonas methanica (NCIMB 11130T, R-45363, and R-45371), Methylomonas koyamae (R-45378, R-45383, and R-49807), Methylomonas lenta (R-45370), and Methylosinus sp. (R-45379) were obtained. These aerobic methanotrophs were isolated from terrestrial ecosystems, and their distinct phenotypes related to nitrogen assimilation and dissimilation were previously reported.
Construction of FLAG tagging vectors for Candida albicans

We have constructed three new vectors for Candida albicans (pFLAG–Act1, pFLAG–Mal2, and pFLAG–Met3). The proteins can be expressed as C‐terminal FLAG‐tagged proteins under the control of different promoters (ACT1, MAL2, and MET3). To confirm the protein expression, we used the Renilla reniformis luciferase and the drug efflux pump Cdr1p of Candida albicans as reporters. The luciferase protein expressed by the MET3 promoter was found to have the strongest activity of the three promoters when cultured in a methionine‐depleted synthetic medium. Cdr1p was expressed as a C‐terminal FLAG‐tagged protein using either these vectors or PCR‐mediated integration. The fluconazole resistance was increased by the Cdr1p expression in a CDR1 homozygous disruptant. The expressed proteins were detected by Western blotting using the anti‐FLAG antibody. We also constructed a Cdr1p–FLAG expressing strain, in which we directly tagged Cdr1p with FLAG on the genome loci, using a PCR‐based integrative marker cassette that was amplified using the pFLAG vector. We then confirmed the protein expression by Western blotting. Thus, these new vectors are useful as C. albicans genetic tools. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.