Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Primary Role for CD4+ T Lymphocytes in Recovery from Oropharyngeal Candidiasis

ABSTRACT Oropharyngeal candidiasis is associated with defects in cell-mediated immunity and is commonly seen in human immunodeficiency virus positive individuals and AIDS patients. A model for oral candidiasis in T-cell-deficient BALB/c and CBA/CaH nu/nu mice was established. After inoculation with 108Candida albicans yeasts, these mice displayed increased levels of oral colonization compared to euthymic control mice and developed a chronic oropharyngeal infection. Histopathological examination of nu/nu oral tissues revealed extensive hyphae penetrating the epithelium, with polymorphonuclear leukocyte microabscess formation. Adoptive transfer of either naive or immune lymphocytes into immunodeficient mice resulted in the recovery of these animals from the oral infection. Reconstitution of immunodeficient mice with naive CD4+ but not CD8+ T cells significantly decreased oral colonization compared to controls. Interleukin-12 and gamma interferon were detected in the draining lymph nodes of immunodeficient mice following reconstitution with naive lymphocytes. This study demonstrates the direct requirement for T lymphocytes in recovery from oral candidiasis and suggests that this is associated with the production of cytokines by CD4+ T helper cells.
Enhanced thermal stability of an alkaline protease, AprP, isolated from a Pseudomonas sp. by mutation at an autoproteolysis site, Ser‐331

The thermal stability of the alkaline protease extracellular subtilisin‐type serine protease (AprP) from Pseudomonas sp. KFCC 10818 was improved by altering an amino acid residue at an autoproteolytic cleavage site. N‐terminal sequence analysis of the autoproteolytic products of the protein revealed the presence of two cleavage sites, Ser‐307 and Ser‐331. To increase the thermal stability of the enzyme, serine residues of these sites were replaced with aspartate. The S331D mutant enzyme was successfully purified and characterized whereas the S307D mutant was not. The half‐lives of the S331D mutant at 55 °C and 60 °C were 1.5 and 2.4 times longer than that of the wild‐type enzyme, respectively. In addition, the catalytic efficiency was also enhanced.
Semi-Automatic Road Tracking using Parallel Angular Texture Signature

Road tracking is a promising technique to increase the efficiency of road mapping. In this paper, a semi-automatic road tracker, Parallel Angular Texture Signature (PATS), is presented. The tracker is object-oriented in some sense, because it makes best use of the texture signature of road primitives on high-resolution remotely sensed imagery. Our tracker uses parabolas to model the road trajectory and predicts the position of next road centerline point. It employs PATS to get the moving direction of current road centerline point, and it will move on one predefined step along the moving direction to reach a new position, and then it uses curvature change to verify the newly added road point. Moreover, we also build compactness of Angular Texture Signature polygon to check whether the PATS is suitable for subsequent tracking. Repeat the above steps until the whole task is finished. Extensive experiments demonstrate that the proposed tracker is capable of efficiently extracting most of main roads from medium and low resolution imagery, and reliably and robustly extracting most of ribbon roads from high resolution SAR and optical imagery.
Antenna switch linearity requirements for GSM/WCDMA mobile phone front-ends

The design of the RF front-end part in modern cellular phones is becoming increasingly complex and demanding due to increasing number of frequency bands and modes that the phone needs to operate in. One of the main components of the RF front-end is the antenna switch that selects which TX/RX path is connected to the antenna. This paper considers the linearity requirements for antenna switches used to switch full-duplex WCDMA signals. The most demanding linearity requirement for WCDMA is shown to be the RX out-of-band blocking performance. The out-of-band blocking problem is shown to be caused by the three dominating intermodulation distortion (IMD) mechanisms of the switch. The switch IMD performance is also shown to depend on the relative phase shift between switch and duplexer. Two measurement setups are shown with measured results
In Silico Identification of Potential Therapeutic Targets in the Human Pathogen Helicobacter Pylori

Availability of genome sequences of pathogens has provided a tremendous amount of information that can be useful in drug target and vaccine target identification. One of the recently adopted strategies is based on a subtractive genomics approach, in which the subtraction dataset between the host and pathogen genome provides information for a set of genes that are likely to be essential to the pathogen but absent in the host. This approach has been used successfully in recent times to identify essential genes in Pseudomonas aeruginosa. We have used the same methodology to analyse the whole genome sequence of the human gastric pathogen Helicobacter pylori. Our analysis revealed that out of the 1590 coding sequences of the pathogen, 40 represent essential genes that have no human homolog. We have further analysed these 40 genes by the protein sequence databases to list some 10 genes whose products are possibly exposed on the pathogen surface. This preliminary work reported here identifies a small subset of the Helicobacter proteome that might be investigated further for identifying potential drug and vaccine targets in this pathogen.
A Proof-of-Concept Study Translating Animal Doses of Task-Specific Training to People With Chronic Stroke in 1-Hour Therapy

Objective. The purposes of this study were to (1) examine the feasibility of translating high-repetition doses of upperextremity (UE) task-specific training to people with stroke within the confines of the current outpatient delivery system of 1-hour therapy sessions and (2) to gather preliminary data regarding the potential benefit of this intensity of training. Methods. A total of 15 patients with chronic (>6 months) UE paresis caused by stroke underwent 3 weeks of baseline assessments followed by 6 weeks of the high-repetition intervention (3 sessions/wk for 6 weeks). During each 1-hour session, participants were challenged to complete 300 or more repetitions of UE functional task training (3 tasks × 100 repetitions). Assessments during and after the intervention were used to measure feasibility and potential benefit. Results. For the 13 participants completing the intervention, the average number of repetitions per session was 322. The percentage of sessions attended was 97%. Participant ratings of pain and fatigue were low. Action Research Arm test scores improved an average of 8 points during the intervention and were maintained at the 1-month follow-up. Secondary measures of activity and participation increased, but the measure of impairment did not. Conclusions. It is feasible to deliver hundreds of repetitions of task-specific training to people with stroke in 1-hour therapy sessions. Preliminary outcome data suggest that this intervention may be beneficial for some people with stroke.
EIGENVECTORS : A PROCRUSTES PROBLEM

The problem of estimating sparse eigenvectors of a symmetric matrix attracts a lot of attention in many applications, especially those with high dimensional data set. While classical eigenvectors can be obtained as the solution of a maximization problem, existing approaches formulated this problem by adding a penalty term into the objective function that encourages a sparse solution. Nevertheless, the resulting methods achieve sparsity at a sacrifice of the orthogonality property. In this paper, we develop a new method to estimate dominant sparse eigenvectors without trading off their orthogonality. The problem is highly non-convex and too hard to handle. We apply the minorization-maximization (MM) framework where we iteratively maximize a tight lower bound (surrogate function) of the objective function over the Stiefel manifold. The inner maximization problem turns out to be the rectangular Procrustes problem, which has a closed-form solution. Numerical experiments show that the propose method matches or outperforms existing algorithms in terms of recovery probability and explained variance.
Cyanide metabolism in higher plants. IV. Purification and properties of the beta-cyanolanine synthase of blue lupine.

Abstract β-Cyanoalanine synthase, an enzyme which catalyzes the formation of β-cyanoalanine from l-cysteine and cyanide, has been isolated from the mitochondria of 10-day-old etiolated blue lupine seedlings. The enzyme can be assayed by measuring colorimetrically the sulfide that is also formed during the reaction. A partially purified fraction has been obtained with a specific activity that is 1700 times higher than that of an extract of whole seedling acetone powders. The purification procedure started with an extract of a mitochondrial acetone powder and involved the following steps: MnCl2 treatment, 0 to 80% (NH4)2SO4 precipitation, 38 to 52% (NH4)2SO4 precipitation, 50 to 75% acetone precipitation, Sephadex G-100 column chromatography, and preparative gel electrophoresis. An over-all yield of about 10% was achieved with an 140-fold increase in the specific activity over that of the initial extract of the mitochondrial acetone powder. β-Cyanoalanine synthase has a pH optimum of about 9.5 and a molecular weight of about 53,000 calculated from its elution volume on Sephadex G-100. The enzyme is stable and requires no added cofactors in the reaction mixture. The Km values for l-cysteine and cyanide are 2.5 mm and 0.55 mm, respectively, in the reaction forming β-cyanoalanine. The reverse reaction between β-cyanoalanine and sulfide does not occur under the conditions of the forward reaction. The enzyme is highly specific for l-cysteine with O-acetyl-l-serine being the only other substrate that will react with cyanide. However, the rate of β-cyanoalanine formation with O-acetyl-l-serine is only 5.4% of the rate observed with cysteine. The enzyme will also catalyze an exchange of sulfide into cysteine at one-half the rate of β-cyanoalanine formation. In addition, the purified enzyme will form cysteine from O-acetyl-l-serine and sulfide, but at only one-twenty-fifth of the rate of β-cyanoalanine formation. Methanethiol can replace cyanide as a substrate for the enzyme and in this case S-methylcysteine is formed. However the reaction rate is about one-sixth the rate of β-cyanoalanine formation with all substrates at 2.5 mm. During the purification it was also shown that O-acetylserine sulfhydrase, the enzyme that apparently synthesizes cysteine from O-acetylserine and sulfide in the blue lupine, is a soluble enzyme. This protein has an approximate molecular weight of 41,000 as judged from its elution volume on Sephadex G-100. O-Acetylserine sulfhydrase can also form β-cyanoalanine from O-acetylserine and cyanide; the rate for this reaction, however, is only one-tenth the rate of cysteine formation.
Mediação da Informação e Violência contra mulheres: disseminando a informação estatística no Centro Estadual de Referência da Mulher Fátima Lopes

Apresenta os resultados alcancados no âmbito da pesquisa Violencia contra Mulheres e Informacao, que possui como objetivo principal explicitar a centralidade da articulacao entre a mediacao da informacao e a violencia domestica contra as mulheres, por meio da criacao de um banco de dados e a disseminacao de informacao estatistica no Centro Estadual de Referencia da Mulher Fatima Lopes - orgao especifico de atendimento as mulheres em situacao de violencia -, que se constitua em alicerce para acoes e a construcao de politicas publicas que objetivem o empoderamento e a ressignificacao, por parte daquelas que sofreram e sofrem violencia domestica. De tipo descritiva e natureza quantitativa, utilizou-se de fontes documentais, mais especificamente, as fichas das mulheres atendidas na CERMF em 2014. Para a analise dos dados, lancou-se mao da estatistica descritiva. Assim, pode-se apreender, por meio das informacoes estatisticas produzidas, que a violencia domestica e um fenomeno complexo e multifacetado e que, o seu combate, necessita de acoes intersetoriais, que so terao maior eficacia se forem realizadas tendo como base informacoes confiaveis produzidas e compartilhadas pelos diversos atores sociais envolvidos. Desta forma, as informacoes estatisticas geradas configuram-se como elementos fundamentais para potencializar as resistencias das mulheres, via ressignificacao e transformacao das relacoes de poder instituidas, frente nao apenas as diversas formas de violencia, mas tambem, aos mais distintos tipos de desigualdades.
Alzheimer Amyloid Protein Precursor Is Localized in Nerve Terminal Preparations to Rab5-containing Vesicular Organelles Distinct from Those Implicated in the Synaptic Vesicle Pathway*

In order to localize amyloid protein precursor (APP) in nerve terminals, we have immunoisolated vesicular organelles from nerve terminal preparations using antibodies to Rab5 and synaptophysin. These immunoisolates were then analyzed by electron microscopy and by immunoblotting. The synaptophysin immunoisolates represented a nearly homogeneous population of small synaptic vesicles, with less than 10% contamination by other organelles, and very little APP. In contrast, Rab5 immunoisolates contained, in addition to small synaptic vesicles, substantial numbers of large uni- and bilamellar vesicles and high levels of APP. Thus, it appears that nerve terminal APP is contained predominantly in large vesicular organelles, distinct from synaptic vesicles and from the synaptic vesicle recycling pathway.
SOCIOMETRIC STATUS OF PRESCHOOL CHILDREN RELATED TO AGE, SEX, NURTURANCE-GIVING, AND DEPENDENCY.

Positive and negative sociometric choices were obtained from three groups of nursery school children using a picture board method of presentation. Test-retest reliability was moderate. Age and sex were not related to popularity in these groups. There was a tendency for children of both sexes to give their positive choices to same-sex peers and their negative choices to opposite-sex peers. When data from the three groups were combined, both nurturance-giving and dependence on children were positively related to sociometric status. Dependence on adults was not related to sociometric status in two of the three groups, but yielded a significant negative correlation in the youngest nursery school group.
In-service nonintrusive measurement of echo parameters in telephone-type networks

The paper presents an in-service non-intrusive technique for the measurement of the echo path delay and echo attenuation in telephone-type networks. The proposed method is based on a cross-correlation technique in conjunction with adaptive filtering of the observed transmitted signal. Experimental results show the high accuracy and robustness of the proposed measurement procedure.
Customer Satisfaction Index Assessment Based on Cloud Computing

Customer satisfaction index (CSI) containing economic quality information has become a heated topic in new economic era. How to assess CSI is very important to a country as well as an enterprise. Structure equation model (SEM) is a popular method to analyze CSI. In this paper, we first analyze the observation equations in SEM and find the least square relationship between each structural variable and its observation variables. Then we obtain the modular constraint least square (MCLS) solution of SEM by adding a constraint with modular length to the structural variable. The algorithm is definite without convergence problem and the solution is unique. Furthermore, combining cloud computing technology, we construct a CSI assessment system based on cloud computing.
NEAR-INFRARED SPECTROSCOPY : A RAPID NON-DESTRUCTIVE METHOD FOR MEASURING WOOD PROPERTIES , AND ITS APPLICATION TO TREE BREEDING *

Near-infrared (NIR) spectroscopy provides a rapid, non-destructive method for the routine estimation of wood properties. NIR spectroscopy is increasingly being used to replace traditional methods of wood property assessment, and it provides a wealth of information to tree growers, tree breeders, and manufacturers of forest products. The technology is particularly well-suited to tree improvement programmes where large numbers of samples must be analysed, but it can be utilised in any forestry application where the rapid provision of wood property data is required. The application of NIR spectroscopy to samples ranging in size from milled chips representing whole trees, to sections of wooden strips cut from increment cores, and, at the smallest scale, to wafers cut from the tangential face of cores was examined, along with studies that have utilised NIR spectroscopy for tree breeding purposes. The technology has some limitations and there are also obstacles to wider acceptance.
A novel hybrid method for vocal fold pathology diagnosis based on russian language

In this paper, first, an initial feature vector for vocal fold pathology diagnosis is proposed. Then, for optimizing the initial feature vector, a genetic algorithm is proposed. Some experiments are carried out for evaluating and comparing the classification accuracies, which are obtained by the use of the different classifiers (ensemble of decision tree, discriminant analysis and K-nearest neighbours) and the different feature vectors (the initial and the optimized ones). Finally, a hybrid of the ensemble of decision tree and the genetic algorithm is proposed for vocal fold pathology diagnosis based on Russian Language. The experimental results show a better performance (the higher classification accuracy and the lower response time) of the proposed method in comparison with the others. While the usage of pure decision tree leads to the classification accuracy of 85.4% for vocal fold pathology diagnosis based on Russian language, the proposed method leads to the 8.5% improvement (the accuracy of 93.9%).
Visual Peoplemeter: A Vision-based Television Audience Measurement System

Visual peoplemeter is a vision-based measurement system that objectively evaluates the attentive behavior for TV audience rating, thus offering solution to some of drawbacks of current manual logging peoplemeters. In this paper, some limitations of current audience measurement system are reviewed and a novel vision-based system aiming at passive metering of viewers is prototyped. The system uses camera mounted on a television as a sensing modality and applies advanced computer vision algorithms to detect and track a person, and to recognize attentional states. Feasibility of the system is evaluated on a secondary dataset. The results show that the proposed system can analyze viewer's attentive behavior, therefore enabling passive estimates of relevant audience measurement categories.
Two-Step Functional Innovation of the Stem-Cell Factors WUS/WOX5 during Plant Evolution

WUS and WOX5, which are expressed, respectively, in the organizing center (OC) and the quiescent center (QC), are essential for shoot/root apical stem-cell maintenance in flowering plants. However, little is known about how these stem-cell factors evolved their functions in flowering plants. Here, we show that the WUS/WOX5 proteins acquired two distinct capabilities by a two-step functional innovation process in the course of plant evolution. The first-step is the apical stem-cell maintenance activity of WUS/WOX5, which originated in the common ancestor of ferns and seed plants, as evidenced by the interspecies complementation experiments, showing that ectopic expression of fern Ceratopteris richardii WUS-like (CrWUL) surrounding OC/QC, or exclusive OC-/QC-expressed gymnosperms/angiosperms WUS/WOX5 in Arabidopsis wus-1 and wox5-1 mutants, could rescue their phenotypes. The second-step is the intercellular mobility that emerged in the common ancestor of seed plants after divergence from the ferns. Evidence for this includes confocal imaging of GFP fusion proteins, showing that WUS/WOX5 from seed plants, rather than from the fern CrWUL, can migrate into cells adjacent to the OC/QC. Evolutionary analysis showed that the WUS-like gene was duplicated into two copies prior to the divergence of gymnosperms/angiosperms. Then the two gene copies (WUS and WOX5) have undergone similar levels of purifying selection, which is consistent with their conserved functions in angiosperm shoot/root stem-cell maintenance and floral organ formation. Our results highlight the critical roles and the essential prerequisites that the two-step functional innovation of these genes performs and represents in the origin of flowering plants.
Read Performance Reliability in TMR Head

Causes of head instability and design improvements in tunneling magnetoresistive heads are discussed. Head instability results in output signal amplitude changes and/or signal distortion due to the output noise. Under accelerated environmental conditions, a test using an original "V-H tester” was done to study and analyze the conditions of which instability occurs. From the result of the test, instability was classified into four categories. The improved sample heads were prepared, and the effectiveness was proved.
Clinical predictors of ventilatory threshold achievement in patients with claudication.

PURPOSE Ventilatory threshold (VT) is considered a clinically important marker of cardiovascular function in several populations, including patients with claudication, because it is related to walking capacity and hemodynamics. The purpose of this study was to identify clinical predictors for VT achievement in patients with intermittent claudication. METHODS One hundred and seventy-seven (n = 177) patients with intermittent claudication performed a progressive graded cardiopulmonary treadmill test until maximal claudication pain. Oxygen uptake (V˙O2) was continuously measured during the test, and afterwards, VT was visually detected. Clinical characteristics, demographic data, comorbid conditions, and cardiovascular risk factors were obtained. Patients who achieved and did not achieve VT were compared, as well as the workload that VT occurred in the former group. RESULTS VT was achieved in 134 patients (76%), and the mean V˙O2 at VT for these patients was 10.8 ± 2.4 mL·kg(-1)·min(-1). Patients who did not achieve VT presented lower ankle brachial index (ABI), claudication onset time, peak walking time, and V˙O2peak, and the proportion of women was higher compared with patients who achieved VT (P < 0.05). Multiple linear regression analysis identified that sex (b = 0.25, P = 0.002), body mass index (b = -0.18, P = 0.025), peak walking time (b = 0.17, P = 0.044), and ABI (b = 0.23, P = 0.006) were predictors of V˙O2 at VT. CONCLUSIONS Forty-three patients (24%) with intermittent claudication did not achieve VT, and these patients were mostly women and those with greater severity of disease. Moreover, in those who reached VT, the predictors of poor VT were female sex, high body mass index, low peak walking time, and low ABI.