Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Basic mechanisms of DNA-raised antibody responses to intramuscular and gene gun immunizations.

DNA-raised antibody (Ab) responses have been compared for the dependence on CD4+ and CD8+ cells, the longevity of functional antigen (Ag) expression, and the nature of the Ag-presenting cell after intramuscular (i.m.) and gene gun inoculations. A plasmid expressing the hemagglutinin (HA) glycoprotein of influenza virus was used for immunizations of BALB/c mice. Intramuscular and gene gun-raised Abs had similar dependencies on CD4+ and CD8+ cells but different temporal patterns of functional Ag expression. The two methods of DNA immunization also appeared to have different frequencies or types of Ag-presenting cells in the draining lymph nodes and spleen. For both methods of DNA delivery, Ab was independent of CD8+ cells but dependent on CD4+ cells. The CD4 dependence occurred at priming but not booster immunizations and resulted in a 1-month delay in the Ab response. Temporal T-cell transfers from TCR+/+ mice into immunized TCR-/- mice revealed the persistence of DNA-expressed Ag for up to 1 month after both i.m. and gene gun inoculations. For gene gun, but not i.m. immunizations, approximately 90% of the functional Ag expression was lost by 1 week, consistent with the sloughing of the epidermal target site. Despite similar titers of raised Ab, Ag-presenting dendritic cells could be detected in the draining lymph nodes and spleen of gene gun- but not i.m. DNA-immunized mice. In the gene gun-immunized mice, Ag-presenting dendritic cells appeared in the draining lymph nodes before the spleen.
AndroStep: Android Storage Performance Analysis Tool

The applications in Android based smartphones generate unique IO requests; however, existing IO workload generators and trace capturing tools are designed to neither generate nor capture the IO requests of Android apps. In this paper, we introduce the Android storage performance analysis Tool (AndroStep) which is specifically designed for characterizing and analyzing the behavior of the IO subsystem in Android based devices. AndroStep consists of workload generator, called Mobibench, and workload analyzer, called Mobile Storage Analyzer (MOST). Mobibench is an android App, which generates typical filesystem workloads, e.g., Random vs. Sequential and Synchronous vs. Buffered IO, as well as the most dominant workload in Android platform: SQLite insert/update and a write followed by fsync() call. Mobibench can also vary the number of concurrent threads to examine the storage and filesystem overhead to support concurrency, e.g., metadata updates, journal file creation/deletion. MOST capture the trace and extracts key filesystem access characteristics: access pattern with respect to file types, ratio between random vs. sequential access, ratio between buffered vs. synchronous IO, fraction of metadata accesses, etc. MOST implements reverse mapping feature (finding an inode for a given block) and retrospective reverse mapping (finding an inode for a deleted file). We explain the structure and usage of AndroStep in detail. We verify performance result of Mobibench on eight smartphone models.
Ferulic Acid Alleviates Changes in a Rat Model of Metabolic Syndrome Induced by High-Carbohydrate, High-Fat Diet

Metabolic syndrome is a cluster of metabolic abnormalities characterized by obesity, insulin resistance, hypertension and dyslipidemia. Ferulic acid (FA) is the major phenolic compound found in rice oil and various fruits and vegetables. In this study, we examined the beneficial effects of FA in minimizing insulin resistance, vascular dysfunction and remodeling in a rat model of high-carbohydrate, high-fat diet-induced metabolic changes, which is regarded as an analogue of metabolic syndrome (MS) in man. Male Sprague-Dawley rats were fed a high carbohydrate, high fat (HCHF) diet and 15% fructose in drinking water for 16 weeks, where control rats were fed with standard chow diet and tap water. FA (30 or 60 mg/kg) was orally administered to the HCHF and control rats during the last six weeks of the study. We observed that FA significantly improved insulin sensitivity and lipid profiles, and reduced elevated blood pressure, compared to untreated controls (p < 0.05). Moreover, FA also improved vascular function and prevented vascular remodeling of mesenteric arteries. The effects of FA in HCHF-induced MS may be realized through suppression of oxidative stress by down-regulation of p47phox, increased nitric oxide (NO) bioavailability with up-regulation of endothelial nitric oxide synthase (eNOS) and suppression of tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α). Our results suggest that supplementation of FA may have health benefits by minimizing the cardiovascular complications of MS and alleviating its symptoms.
How do experienced information lens users use rules?

The Information Lens provides electronic mail users with the ability to write rules that automatically sort, select, and filter their messages. This paper describes preliminary results from an eighteen-month investigation of the use of this system at a corporate test site. We report the experiences of 13 voluntary users who have each had at least three months experience with the most recent version of the system. We found that:People without significant computer experience are able to create and use rules effectively. Useful rules can be created based on the fields present in all messages (e.g., searching for distribution lists or one's own name in the address fields or for character strings in the subject field), even without any special message templates. People use rules both to prioritize messages before reading them and to sort messages into folders for storage after reading them. People use delete rules primarily to filter out messages from low-priority distribution lists, not to delete personal messages to themselves.
Social Network Analysis for Information Flow in Disconnected Delay-Tolerant MANETs

Message delivery in sparse mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) is difficult due to the fact that the network graph is rarely (if ever) connected. A key challenge is to find a route that can provide good delivery performance and low end-to-end delay in a disconnected network graph where nodes may move freely. We cast this challenge as an information flow problem in a social network. This paper presents social network analysis metrics that may be used to support a novel and practical forwarding solution to provide efficient message delivery in disconnected delay-tolerant MANETs. These metrics are based on social analysis of a node's past interactions and consists of three locally evaluated components: a node's "betweenness" centrality (calculated using ego networks) and a node's social 'similarity' to the destination node and a node's tie strength relationship with the destination node. We present simulations using three real trace data sets to demonstrate that by combining these metrics delivery performance may be achieved close to epidemic routing but with significantly reduced overhead. Additionally, we show improved performance when compared to PRoPHET routing.
Incorporation of Graphene-Related Carbon Nanosheets in Membrane Fabrication for Water Treatment: A Review

The minimization of the trade-off between the flux and the selectivity of membranes is a key area that researchers are continually working to optimise, particularly in the area of fabrication of novel membranes. Flux versus selectivity issues apply in many industrial applications of membranes, for example the unwanted diffusion of methanol in fuel cells, retention of valuable proteins in downstream processing of biopharmaceuticals, rejection of organic matter and micro-organisms in water treatment, or salt permeation in desalination. The incorporation of nanosheets within membrane structures can potentially lead to enhancements in such properties as the antifouling ability, hydrophilicy and permeability of membranes, with concomitant improvements in the flux/selectivity balance. Graphene nanosheets and derivatives such as graphene oxide and reduced graphene oxide have been investigated for this purpose, for example inclusion of nanosheets within the active layer of Reverse Osmosis or Nanofiltration membranes or the blending of nanosheets as fillers within Ultrafiltration membranes. This review summarizes the incorporation of graphene derivatives into polymeric membranes for water treatment with a focus on a number of industrial applications, including desalination and pharmaceutical removal, where enhancement of productivity and reduction in fouling characteristics have been afforded by appropriate incorporation of graphene derived nanosheets during membrane fabrication.
A hashtags dictionary from crowdsourced definitions

Hashtags are user-defined terms used on the Web to tag messages like microposts, as featured on Twitter. Because a hashtag is a textual word, its representation does not convey all the concepts it embodies. Several online dictionaries have been manually and collaboratively built to provide natural language definitions of hashtags. Unfortunately, these dictionaries in their rough form are inefficient for their inclusion in automatic text processing systems. As hashtags can be polysemic, dictionaries are also agnostic to collision of hashtags. This paper presents our approach for the automatic structuration of hashtags definitions into synonym rings. We present the output as a so-called folksionary, i.e. a single integrated dictionary built from everybody's definitions. For this purpose, we achieved a semantic-relatedness clustering to group definitions that share the same meaning.
Implicit environment-based coordination in pervasive computing

By immersing computational systems into the physical world, pervasive computing brings us from traditional desktop computing interactions into a form closer to human interactions, which are characterized by their dependance on the environment. Furthermore, acting within the environment can contribute in many cases to a form of implicit interaction in which no explicit communication message is exchanged. However, this way of interacting cannot be achieved without a shared common knowledge with a well defined semantic. This appeals to explore a new approach of interaction mediated by the environment, closer to human interactions, and therefore, more suitable to achieve the intended silent computation of pervasive computing.To address this issue, we present in this paper XCM; a generic coordination model for pervasive computing. XCM is organized around few abstract concepts (entity, environment, social law and port) and is expressed as an ontology. While the abstract concepts of XCM deal with the environmental representation and context-dependency, the ontological representation allows to achieve knowledge sharing and context reasoning.
Tensor Distance Based Multilinear Locality-Preserved Maximum Information Embedding

This brief paper presents a unified framework for tensor-based dimensionality reduction (DR) with a new tensor distance (TD) metric and a novel multilinear locality-preserved maximum information embedding (MLPMIE) algorithm. Different from traditional Euclidean distance, which is constrained by the orthogonality assumption, TD measures the distance between data points by considering the relationships among different coordinates. To preserve the natural tensor structure in low-dimensional space, MLPMIE directly works on the high-order form of input data and iteratively learns the transformation matrices. In order to preserve the local geometry and to maximize the global discrimination simultaneously, MLPMIE keeps both local and global structures in a manifold model. By integrating TD into tensor embedding, TD-MLPMIE performs tensor-based DR through the whole learning procedure, and achieves stable performance improvement on various standard datasets.
Pathways and trajectories linking housing instability and poor health among low-income women experiencing intimate partner violence (IPV): Toward a conceptual framework

ABSTRACT We used grounded theory to understand pathways and trajectories to housing instability (HI) and poor health among low-income women with experiences of intimate partner violence (IPV). We conducted in-depth interviews during 2010–11 with forty-one women (ages 18–45 years) living in Ontario, Canada. All women reported depressive symptoms in combination with other health problems. In addition to the direct pathway of IPV to poor health, thematic analysis revealed an indirect multi-tiered pathway with complex trajectories among IPV, HI, and poor health. These trajectories included material HI (homelessness, high mobility, evictions, problems paying rent, hiding, and landlord discrimination), psychological HI (feeling unsafe, low self-esteem, and poor control), and social trajectories (financial problems, loss of employment, income, or social networks, and leaving school). These trajectories elevated stress and decreased self-care (unhealthy behaviors, substance abuse, and reduced medical compliance) and exacerbated poor health already compromised by IPV. Depending on her specific context, each woman experienced these pathways and trajectories differently. Moreover, the women’s experiences differed across three time periods: before, immediately after, and long after leaving an abusive relationship. Finally, we found that for these women, achieving stable housing was crucial for stabilizing their health.
Escaping from the Filter Bubble? The Effects of Novelty and Serendipity on Users' Evaluations of Online Recommendations

Recommender systems aim to support consumers in identifying the most relevant items. However, there are concerns that recommenders may imprison users in a “filter bubble” by recommending items predominantly known to users. On the other hand, providing unconventional items increases risks of not meeting users’ taste. Given this trade-off, we analyze the effects of consumers’ perceived levels of recommendation novelty and serendipity on perceived preference fit and enjoyment. We find that merely increasing the level of novel recommendations is insufficient. Instead, recommenders should provide more serendipitous recommendations as this leads to higher perceived preference fit and enjoyment. In addition, market and recommender technology characteristics need to be taken into account as they partially determine the level of novel and serendipitous recommendations. Our findings have significant implications for research as they add additional insights on users’ evaluations of recommender systems. For practice, our results enable online retailers to develop better recommenders.
How shall we write and read in twenty-first century academy?: Notes on the margin of electronic publishing

Purpose – The paper's aim is to point out trends in scholarly communication – both some of the main advantages and the yet unsolved problems that technology – swift communication lines, digitalization and the web – brought into one of the most important activities of academic life: the reading – writing – publishing cycle.Design/methodology/approach – The different stages, which eventually give birth to a scientific paper, are described here as thinking – (experimenting) – reading – writing – publishing, and analyzed from handwritten to print to digital texts, with an emphasis on the revolutionary changes that scholarly publishing is experiencing.Findings – Thanks to computerization, hypertext and the web, academic life enjoys swift and effortless communication, ease of writing, rapid publishing, almost unlimited access, but there are several uncalled for developments as well.Originality/value – The new technologies lack a convenient way of writing‐while‐reading, enhance plagiarism, eliminate traditional .
Polymicrobial Nature of Chronic Diabetic Foot Ulcer Biofilm Infections Determined Using Bacterial Tag Encoded FLX Amplicon Pyrosequencing (bTEFAP)

Background Diabetic extremity ulcers are associated with chronic infections. Such ulcer infections are too often followed by amputation because there is little or no understanding of the ecology of such infections or how to control or eliminate this type of chronic infection. A primary impediment to the healing of chronic wounds is biofilm phenotype infections. Diabetic foot ulcers are the most common, disabling, and costly complications of diabetes. Here we seek to derive a better understanding of the polymicrobial nature of chronic diabetic extremity ulcer infections. Methods and Findings Using a new bacterial tag encoded FLX amplicon pyrosequencing (bTEFAP) approach we have evaluated the bacterial diversity of 40 chronic diabetic foot ulcers from different patients. The most prevalent bacterial genus associated with diabetic chronic wounds was Corynebacterium spp. Findings also show that obligate anaerobes including Bacteroides, Peptoniphilus, Fingoldia, Anaerococcus, and Peptostreptococcus spp. are ubiquitous in diabetic ulcers, comprising a significant portion of the wound biofilm communities. Other major components of the bacterial communities included commonly cultured genera such as Streptococcus, Serratia, Staphylococcus and Enterococcus spp. Conclusions In this article, we highlight the patterns of population diversity observed in the samples and introduce preliminary evidence to support the concept of functional equivalent pathogroups (FEP). Here we introduce FEP as consortia of genotypically distinct bacteria that symbiotically produce a pathogenic community. According to this hypothesis, individual members of these communities when they occur alone may not cause disease but when they coaggregate or consort together into a FEP the synergistic effect provides the functional equivalence of well-known pathogens, such as Staphylococcus aureus, giving the biofilm community the factors necessary to maintain chronic biofilm infections. Further work is definitely warranted and needed in order to prove whether the FEPs concept is a viable hypothesis. The findings here also suggest that traditional culturing methods may be extremely biased as a diagnostic tool as they select for easily cultured organisms such as Staphylococcus aureus and against difficult to culture bacteria such as anaerobes. While PCR methods also have bias, further work is now needed in comparing traditional culture results to high-resolution molecular diagnostic methods such as bTEFAP.
Nonlinear Fitness Consequences of Variation in Expression Level of a Eukaryotic Gene

Levels of gene expression show considerable variation in eukaryotes, but no fine-scale maps have been made of the fitness consequences of such variation in controlled genetic backgrounds and environments. To address this, we assayed fitness at many levels of up- and down-regulated expression of a single essential gene, LCB2, involved in sphingolipid synthesis in budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Reduced LCB2 expression rapidly decreases cellular fitness, yet increased expression has little effect. The wild-type expression level is therefore perched on the edge of a nonlinear fitness cliff. LCB2 is upregulated when cells are exposed to osmotic stress; consistent with this, the entire fitness curve is shifted upward to higher expression under osmotic stress, illustrating the selective force behind gene regulation. Expression levels of LCB2 are lower in wild yeast strains than in the experimental lab strain, suggesting that higher levels in the lab strain may be idiosyncratic. Reports indicate that the effect sizes of alleles contributing to variation in complex phenotypes differ among environments and genetic backgrounds; our results suggest that such differences may be explained as simple shifts in the position of nonlinear fitness curves.
Cytoplasmic pH and free Mg2+ in lymphocytes

Measurements have been made of cytoplasmic pH, (pHi) and free Mg2+ concentration, ( [Mg2+]i), in pig and mouse lymphocytes. pHi was measured in four ways: by a digitonin null-point technique; by direct measurement of the pH of freeze-thawed cell pellets; from the 31P nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectrum of intracellular inorganic phosphate; and by the use of a newly synthesized, intracellularly- trappable fluorescent pH indicator. In HEPES buffered physiological saline with pH 7.4 at 37 degrees C, pHi was close to 7.0. Addition of physiological levels of HCO3- and CO2 transiently acidified the cells by approximately 0.1 U. Mitogenic concentrations of concanavalin A (Con A) had no measurable effect on pH in the first hour. [Mg2+]i was assessed in three ways: (a) from the external Mg2+ null-point at which the ionophore A23187 produced no net movement of Mg2+ or H+; (b) by Mg- sensitive electrode measurements in freeze-thawed pellets; and (c) from the 31P nuclear magnetic resonance spectrum of the gamma-phosphate of intracellular ATP. Total cell Mg2+ was approximately 12 mmol per liter cell water. The NMR data indicated [Mg2+]i greater than 0.5 mM. The null-point method gave [Mg2+]i approximately 0.9 nM. The electrode measurements gave 1.35 mM, which was thought to be an overestimate. Exposure to mitogenic doses of Con A for 1 h gave no detectable change in total or free Mg2+.
Divided Attention Deficits in Patients With Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

Chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) patients and controls were compared on a variety of mood state, personality, and neuropsychological measures, including memory, word finding, and attentional tasks that required participants to focus, sustain, or divide their attention, or to perform a combination of these functions. CFS patients demonstrated a selective deficit on 3 measures of divided attention. Their performance on the other neuropsychological tests of intelligence, fluency, and memory was no different than that of normal controls despite their reports of generally diminished cognitive capacity. There was an inverse relation between CFS patient fatigue severity and performance on 1 of the divided attention measures. Given these findings, it is probable that CFS patients will report more cognitive difficulties in real-life situations that cause them to divide their effort or rapidly reallocate cognitive resources between 2 response channels (vision and audition).
Immunochemical analysis of myosin heavy chain during avian myogenesis in vivo and in vitro

Monoclonal antibodies (McAbs) against the myosin heavy chain (MHC) of adult chicken pectoralis muscle have been tested for reactivity with pectoralis myosin at selected stages of chick development in vivo and in vitro. Three such McAbs, MF 20 and MF 14, which bind to light meromyosin, and MF 30, which binds to myosin subfragment two (S2), were used to assay the appearance and accumulation of specific MHC epitopes with: (a) indirect, solid phase radioimmune assay (RIA), (b) immunoautoradiography, (c) immunofluorescence microscopy. McAb MF 20 bound strongly and equivalently to MHC at all stages of embryonic development in vivo. In contrast, the MF 30 epitope was barely detectable at 12 d of incubation but its concentration rose rapidly just before hatching. No detectable binding of MF 14 to pectoralis myosin could be measured during myogenesis in vivo until 1 wk after hatching. Immunofluorescence studies revealed that all three epitopes accumulate in the same myocytes of the developing pectoralis muscle. Since all three McAbs bound with high activity to native and denatured forms of myosin, it is unlikely that differential antibody reactivity can be explained by conformational changes in myosin during development in vivo. When myogenesis in vitro was monitored using the same McAbs, MF 20 bound to the MHC at all stages tested while reactivity of MF 30 and MF 14 with myosin from cultured muscle was never observed. Thus, this study demonstrates three different immunochemical states of the MHC during development in vivo of chick pectoralis muscle and the absence of later occurring immunochemical transitions in the MHC of cultured embryonic muscle.