Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Humoral and Cell-mediated Autoimmune Reactions to Human Acidic Ribosomal P2 Protein in Individuals Sensitized to Aspergillus fumigatus P2 Protein

A panel of cDNAs encoding allergenic proteins was isolated from an Aspergillus fumigatus cDNA library displayed on the surface of filamentous phage. Solid phase–immobilized serum immunoglobulin E (IgE) from A. fumigatus–allergic individuals was used to enrich phage displaying IgE-binding molecules. One of the cDNAs encoded a 11.1-kD protein that was identified as acidic ribosomal phosphoprotein type 2 (P2 protein). The allergen, formally termed rAsp f 8, shares >62% sequence identity and >84% sequence homology to corresponding eukaryotic P2 proteins, including human P2 protein. The sequences encoding human and fungal P2 protein were subcloned, expressed in Escherichia coli as His6-tagged fusion proteins, and purified by Ni2+–chelate affinity chromatography. Both recombinant P2 proteins were recognized by IgE antibodies from allergic individuals sensitized to the A. fumigatus P2 protein and elicited strong type 1–specific skin reactions in these individuals. Moreover, human and fungal P2 proteins induced proliferative responses in peripheral blood mononuclear cells of A. fumigatus– allergic subjects sensitized to the fungal P2 protein. These data provide strong evidence for in vitro and in vivo humoral and cell-mediated autoreactivity to human P2 protein in patients suffering from chronic A. fumigatus allergy.
Enriques Surfaces Covered by Jacobian Kummer Surfaces

Abstract This paper classifies Enriques surfaces whose K3-cover is a fixed Picard-general Jacobian Kummer surface. There are exactly 31 such surfaces. We describe the free involutions which give these Enriques surfaces explicitly. As a biproduct, we show that Aut(X) is generated by elements of order 2, which is an improvement of the theorem of S. Kondo.
Changes in organelle position and epithelial architecture associated with loss of CrebA

ABSTRACT Drosophila CrebA facilitates high-level secretion by transcriptional upregulation of the protein components of the core secretory machinery. In CrebA mutant embryos, both salivary gland (SG) morphology and epidermal cuticle secretion are abnormal, phenotypes similar to those observed with mutations in core secretory pathway component genes. Here, we examine the cellular defects associated with CrebA loss in the SG epithelium. Apically localized secretory vesicles are smaller and less abundant, consistent with overall reductions in secretion. Unexpectedly, global mislocalization of cellular organelles and excess membrane accumulation in the septate junctions (SJs) are also observed. Whereas mutations in core secretory pathway genes lead to organelle localization defects similar to those of CrebA mutants, they have no effect on SJ-associated membrane. Mutations in tetraspanin genes, which are normally repressed by CrebA, have mild defects in SJ morphology that are rescued by simultaneous CrebA loss. Correspondingly, removal of several tetraspanins gives partial rescue of the CrebA SJ phenotype, supporting a role for tetraspanins in SJ organization.
Improved Snort Intrusion Detection System Using Modified Pattern Matching Technique

As the number of network attacks rise, the need for security measures such as Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS) is essential. IDS's are considered useful especially when new community hacking tools are emerging. Intrusion detection system identifies problems with security policies, documenting existing threats and detects individuals that violate the security policy. Due to the limitations of the firewall and Intrusion Detection System in the information security domain Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) appeared. It is a new generation information security technology following the firewall and intrusion detection technique. It is also secure project that protects the network and system in real-time from attacking and now becomes a hotspot of research in network security domain. This work introduces a novel IDS packet matching technique that provides faster packet inspections with less consumption of RAM and Processor. The Improved Snort IDS uses a new pattern matching algorithm and makes use of modified Snort signatures which utilizes minimum amount of CPU and memory. The experimental results show that the proposed technique has outperformed in comparison to other Network Intrusion Detection Systems (NIDS).
l-Citrulline Protects from Kidney Damage in Type 1 Diabetic Mice

Rationale: Diabetic nephropathy (DN) is a major cause of end-stage renal disease, associated with endothelial dysfunction. Chronic supplementation of l-arginine (l-arg), the substrate for endothelial nitric oxide synthase (eNOS), failed to improve vascular function. l-Citrulline (l-cit) supplementation not only increases l-arg synthesis, but also inhibits cytosolic arginase I, a competitor of eNOS for the use of l-arg, in the vasculature. Aims: To investigate whether l-cit treatment reduces DN in streptozotocin (STZ)-induced type 1 diabetes (T1D) in mice and rats and to study its effects on arginase II (ArgII) function, the main renal isoform. Methods: STZ-C57BL6 mice received l-cit or vehicle supplemented in the drinking water. For comparative analysis, diabetic ArgII knock out mice and l-cit-treated STZ-rats were evaluated. Results: l-Citrulline exerted protective effects in kidneys of STZ-rats, and markedly reduced urinary albumin excretion, tubulo-interstitial fibrosis, and kidney hypertrophy, observed in untreated diabetic mice. Intriguingly, l-cit treatment was accompanied by a sustained elevation of tubular ArgII at 16 weeks and significantly enhanced plasma levels of the anti-inflammatory cytokine IL-10. Diabetic ArgII knock out mice showed greater blood urea nitrogen levels, hypertrophy, and dilated tubules than diabetic wild type (WT) mice. Despite a marked reduction in collagen deposition in ArgII knock out mice, their albuminuria was not significantly different from diabetic WT animals. l-Cit also restored nitric oxide/reactive oxygen species balance and barrier function in high glucose-treated monolayers of human glomerular endothelial cells. Moreover, l-cit also has the ability to establish an anti-inflammatory profile, characterized by increased IL-10 and reduced IL-1β and IL-12(p70) generation in the human proximal tubular cells. Conclusion: l-Citrulline supplementation established an anti-inflammatory profile and significantly preserved the nephron function during T1D.
Objective analysis of emotional speech for English and Slovenian Interface emotional speech databases

In this paper we propose a new approach for analysis of emotional speech prosody features. The aim of the analysis is definition of emotional features that characterise emotions. Analysis was performed on emotional speech databases that were recorded in the framework of the project "Multimodal Analysis/Synthesis System for Human Interaction to Virtual and Augmented Environments" (Interface). The new approach determines emotional features in three steps. In the first step the low-level features were determined, second step includes definition of high-level features and in the last step the emotional features were determined. Emotional features for native English and native Slovenian speakers were analysed. A comparison of emotional features between English male and female speaker, English male and Slovenian male as well as English female and Slovenian female speaker was performed. New approach for analysis of emotional features enables consistent and objective analysis. It enables comparison of emotional features between different speakers and at the same time searches for new correlates of emotions in speech.
Dynamic VC Organization for Efficient NoC Communication

Dynamically Allocated Multi Queue (DAMQ) is employed to design Virtual Channel (VC) structure for efficient NoC communication. However, DAMQ has some drawbacks related to higher latency and lower throughput. We present a new VC organization methodology to improve DAMQ-based technique. The micro-architecture of a fast DAMQ input-port is presented in this paper. Input-ports are the key components of high performance routers for NoC systems. Our new input-port architecture alleviates congestion in NoCs. It also employs minimal hardware as compared to traditional dynamic VC input-port structures. The simulation and experimental results for our methodology shows significant improvements in terms of throughput and latency as compared to conventional dynamic VCs. We have implemented our scheme for 2D-mesh NoCs to demonstrate its performance for different NoC traffic patterns.
Monitoring Epidemic Alert Levels by Analyzing Internet Search Volume

The prevention of infectious diseases is a global health priority area. The early detection of possible epidemics is the first and important defense line against infectious diseases. However, conventional surveillance systems, e.g., the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), rely on clinical data. The CDC publishes the surveillance results weeks after epidemic outbreaks. To improve the early detection of epidemic outbreaks, we designed a syndromic surveillance system to predict the epidemic trends based on disease-related Google search volume. Specifically, we first represented the epidemic trend with multiple alert levels to reduce the noise level. Then, we predicted the epidemic alert levels using a continuous density HMM, which incorporated the intrinsic characteristic of the disease transmission for alert level estimation. Respective models are built to monitor both national and regional epidemic alert levels of the U.S. The proposed system can provide real-time surveillance results, which are weeks before the CDC's reports. This paper focusses on monitoring the infectious disease in the U.S., however, we believe similar approach may be used to monitor epidemics for the developing countries as well.
Metatheory and Reflection in Theorem Proving: A Survey and Critique

One way to ensure correctness of the inference performed by computer theorem provers is to force all proofs to be done step by step in a simple, more or less traditional, deductive system. Using techniques pioneered in Edinburgh LCF, this can be made palatable. However, some believe such an approach will never be efficient enough for large, complex proofs. One alternative, commonly called reflection, is to analyze proofs using a second layer of logic, a metalogic, and so justify abbreviating or simplifying proofs, making the kinds of shortcuts humans often do or appealing to specialized decision algorithms. In this paper we contrast the fully-expansive LCF approach with the use of reflection. We put forward arguments to suggest that the inadequacy of the LCF approach has not been adequately demonstrated, and neither has the practical utility of reflection (notwithstanding its undoubted intellectual interest). The LCF system with which we are most concerned is the HOL proof assistant. The plan of the paper is as follows. We examine ways of providing user extensibility for theorem provers, which naturally places the LCF and reflective approaches in opposition. A detailed introduction to LCF is provided, emphasizing ways in which it can be made efficient. Next, we present a short introduction to metatheory and its usefulness, and, starting from Gödel’s proofs and Feferman’s transfinite progressions of theories, look at logical ‘reflection principles’. We show how to introduce computational ‘reflection principles’ which do not extend the power of the logic, but may make deductions in it more efficient, and speculate about their practical usefulness. Applications or proposed applications of computational reflection in theorem proving are surveyed, following which we draw some conclusions. In an appendix, we attempt to clarify a couple of other notions of ‘reflection’ often encountered in
Designers' Perspective of Website Usability: The Cultural Dimension

The aim of this paper is to conduct a comparative study between liberal and prescriptive cultures (in this case Arab and British audiences) to extract the views of Web designers in both countries regarding web usability. Its purpose is to determine the most important issues that should be considered when designing for a particular culture. It is also intended to investigate the extent of the usage of the published usability guidelines and tools in the design of the user interface of a website. The data collection instrument consisted of a 7-page questionnaire for the designers and in many cases, this was followed with an interview or an email to the surveyed designers to clarify their responses. The main outcome of this study was that the designers in both countries believed that although the users share similar preferences and perceptions about many website usability issues, they differ in the importance they give to certain usability elements such as the adherence to local language, culture and religious beliefs. The results of this study proved that one-size-for-all is not the right approach for a successful website. It highlighted the need to consider the customers’ cultural background and their real world experience.
Effects of Streptococcus pneumoniae Strain Background on Complement Resistance

Background Immunity to infections caused by Streptococcus pneumoniae is dependent on complement. There are wide variations in sensitivity to complement between S. pneumoniae strains that could affect their ability to cause invasive infections. Although capsular serotype is one important factor causing differences in complement resistance between strains, there is also considerable other genetic variation between S. pneumoniae strains that may affect complement-mediated immunity. We have therefore investigated whether genetically distinct S. pneumoniae strains with the same capsular serotype vary in their sensitivity to complement mediated immunity. Methodology and Principal Findings C3b/iC3b deposition and neutrophil association were measured using flow cytometry assays for S. pneumoniae strains with different genetic backgrounds for each of eight capsular serotypes. For some capsular serotypes there was marked variation in C3b/iC3b deposition between different strains that was independent of capsule thickness and correlated closely to susceptibility to neutrophil association. C3b/iC3b deposition results also correlated weakly with the degree of IgG binding to each strain. However, the binding of C1q (the first component of the classical pathway) correlated more closely with C3b/iC3b deposition, and large differences remained in complement sensitivity between strains with the same capsular serotype in sera in which IgG had been cleaved with IdeS. Conclusions These data demonstrate that bacterial factors independent of the capsule and recognition by IgG have strong effects on the susceptibility of S. pneumoniae to complement, and could therefore potentially account for some of the differences in virulence between strains.
Perceptual Calibration for Immersive Display Environments

The perception of objects, depth, and distance has been repeatedly shown to be divergent between virtual and physical environments. We hypothesize that many of these discrepancies stem from incorrect geometric viewing parameters, specifically that physical measurements of eye position are insufficiently precise to provide proper viewing parameters. In this paper, we introduce a perceptual calibration procedure derived from geometric models. While most research has used geometric models to predict perceptual errors, we instead use these models inversely to determine perceptually correct viewing parameters. We study the advantages of these new psychophysically determined viewing parameters compared to the commonly used measured viewing parameters in an experiment with 20 subjects. The perceptually calibrated viewing parameters for the subjects generally produced new virtual eye positions that were wider and deeper than standard practices would estimate. Our study shows that perceptually calibrated viewing parameters can significantly improve depth acuity, distance estimation, and the perception of shape.
Multicast session announcements on top of SSM

Before having a multicast event, information about the event needs to be announced to prospective participants. In the current multicast service model, called any source multicast (ASM), it is achieved by exchanging this information on a well-known multicast group address. Researchers have developed SSM, as an alternative multicast model in response to problems with ASM. And therefore, the expectation is that SSM will soon replace ASM in the interdomain scale. Session announcements is inherently a many-to-many application. Support for this application on top of SSM is not a straight forward task. But, success of large scale multicast content distribution partly depends on the existence of a successful session announcements mechanism. In this paper we propose a mechanism to support multicast session announcements application on top of SSM.
The Generalized Riemann or Henstock Integral Underpinning Multivariate Data Analysis: Application to Faint Structure Finding in Price Processes

Practical data analysis involves many implicit or explicit assumptions about the good behavior of the data, and excludes consideration of various potentially pathological or limit cases. In this work, we present a new general theory of data, and of data processing, to bypass some of these assumptions. The new framework presented is focused on integration, and has direct applicability to expectation, distance, correlation, and aggregation. In a case study, we seek to reveal faint structure in financial data. Our new foundation for data encoding and handling offers increased justification for our conclusions.
Cross-Domain Learning Based Traditional Chinese Medicine Medical Record Classification

In Traditional Chinese Medicine(TCM) area, medical records are the objective record of a doctor's diagnosis and treatment and they are the basis of the TCM development. However, existing medical records of TCM are derived from books, medical cases, Web and most of them lack the categories information. In this paper, we propose a text classification method for the TCM medical record based on cross-domain topic model. First, we transform the physical books into the digital documents, then tokenize and filter the documents with domain lexicons to achieve the significative sequences of words which largely maintain the topics of original documents. Second, we use the cross domain topic model named Topic Relevance Weighting Model(TRWM) to generate the features. Finally, the generated features are leveraged for the medical records classification and compared with the baselines. The experimental results validate the effectiveness of our method.
Enhanced Assessment of the Wound-Healing Process by Accurate Multiview Tissue Classification

With the widespread use of digital cameras, freehand wound imaging has become common practice in clinical settings. There is however still a demand for a practical tool for accurate wound healing assessment, combining dimensional measurements and tissue classification in a single user-friendly system. We achieved the first part of this objective by computing a 3-D model for wound measurements using uncalibrated vision techniques. We focus here on tissue classification from color and texture region descriptors computed after unsupervised segmentation. Due to perspective distortions, uncontrolled lighting conditions and view points, wound assessments vary significantly between patient examinations. The main contribution of this paper is to overcome this drawback with a multiview strategy for tissue classification, relying on a 3-D model onto which tissue labels are mapped and classification results merged. The experimental classification tests demonstrate that enhanced repeatability and robustness are obtained and that metric assessment is achieved through real area and volume measurements and wound outline extraction. This innovative tool is intended for use not only in therapeutic follow-up in hospitals but also for telemedicine purposes and clinical research, where repeatability and accuracy of wound assessment are critical.
Molecular cloning and characterization of the recA gene from the cyanobacterium Synechococcus sp. strain PCC 7002

The recA gene of Synechococcus sp. strain PCC 7002 was detected and cloned from a lambda gtwes genomic library by heterologous hybridization by using a gene-internal fragment of the Escherichia coli recA gene as the probe. The gene encodes a 38-kilodalton polypeptide which is antigenically related to the RecA protein of E. coli. The nucleotide sequence of a portion of the gene was determined. The translation of this region was 55% homologous to the E. coli protein; allowances for conservative amino acid replacements yield a homology value of about 74%. The cyanobacterial recA gene product was proficient in restoring homologous recombination and partial resistance to UV irradiation to recA mutants of E. coli. Heterologous hybridization experiments, in which the Synechococcus sp. strain PCC 7002 recA gene was used as the probe, indicate that a homologous gene is probably present in all cyanobacterial strains.
Implementation and performance measurements of QoS routing extensions to OSPF

We discuss an implementation of QoS routing extensions to the open shortest path first (OSPF) routing protocol and evaluate its performance over a wide range of operating conditions. Our evaluations are aimed at assessing the cost and feasibility of QoS routing in IP networks. The results provide insight into the respective weights of the two major components of QoS routing costs, processing cost and protocol overhead and establish strong empirical evidence that the cost of QoS routing is well within the limits of modern technology and can be justified by the performance improvements.
The great divide : religious and cultural conflict in American party politics

PrefaceIntroduction: Cultural Conflict in American Society and Politics1. Explaining Religious and Cultural Changes in the Party System2. Conceptualizing Religion and Religion-Based Political Conflict3. Religious and Cultural Change Among Party Activists4. The Internal and External Divides: Religious and Cultural Conflict Within and Between the Parties5. The Changing Religious Face of the Parties' Mass Coalitions6. Links in the Chain: The Structure and Sequence of Partisan Religious and Cultural Change7. Exploring the Divide: How and When Religion Matters for Contemporary Political Behavior8. Religious Conflict and American Party Politics: The Nature, Implications, and Future of Their RelationshipAppendix A. MeasurementAppendix B. Statistical AnalysisAppendix C. Congressional Votes on Cultural IssuesBibliography