Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Immunoregulation of NKT Cells in Systemic Lupus Erythematosus

Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is a multisystem autoimmune disease with different variety of clinical manifestations. Natural killer T (NKT) cells are innate lymphocytes that play a regulatory role during broad range of immune responses. A number of studies demonstrated that the quantity and quality of invariant NKT (iNKT) cells showed marked defects in SLE patients in comparison to healthy controls. This finding suggests that iNKT cells may play a regulatory role in the occurrence and development of this disease. In this review, we mainly summarized the most recent findings about the behavior of NKT cells in SLE patients and mouse models, as well as how NKT cells affect the proportion of T helper cells and the production of autoreactive antibodies in the progress of SLE. This will help people better understand the role of NKT cells in the development of SLE and improve the therapy strategy.
Can, Want and Try: Parents’ Viewpoints Regarding the Participation of Their Child with an Acquired Brain Injury

Background Acquired brain injury (ABI) is a leading cause of permanent disability, currently affecting 20,000 Australian children. Community participation is essential for childhood development and enjoyment, yet children with ABI can often experience barriers to participation. The factors which act as barriers and facilitators to community participation for children with an ABI are not well understood. Aim To identify the viewpoints of parents of children with an ABI, regarding the barriers and facilitators most pertinent to community participation for their child. Methods Using Q-method, 41 parents of children with moderate/severe ABI sorted 37 statements regarding barriers and facilitators to community participation. Factor analysis identified three viewpoints. Results This study identified three distinct viewpoints, with the perceived ability to participate decreasing with a stepwise trend from parents who felt their child and family “can” participate in viewpoint one, to “want” in viewpoint two and “try” in viewpoint three. Conclusions Findings indicated good participation outcomes for most children and families, however some families who were motivated to participate experienced significant barriers. The most significant facilitators included child motivation, supportive relationships from immediate family and friends, and supportive community attitudes. The lack of supportive relationships and attitudes was perceived as a fundamental barrier to community participation. Significance This research begins to address the paucity of information regarding those factors that impact upon the participation of children with an ABI in Australia. Findings have implications for therapists, service providers and community organisations.
Protein-tyrosine Phosphatase D1, a Potential Regulator and Effector for Tec Family Kinases*

Etk, also named Bmx, is a member of the Tec tyrosine kinase family, which is characterized by a multimodular structure including a pleckstrin homology (PH) domain, an SH3 domain, an SH2 domain, and a catalytic domain. The signaling mechanisms regulating Etk kinase activity remain largely unknown. To identify factor(s) regulating Etk activity, we used the PH domain and a linker region of Etk as a bait for a yeast two-hybrid screen. Three independent clones encoding protein-tyrosine phosphatase D1 (PTPD1) fragments were isolated. The binding of PTPD1 to Etk is specific since PTPD1 cannot associate with either the Akt PH domain or lamin. In vitro and in vivo binding studies demonstrated that PTPD1 can interact with Etk and that residues 726–848 of PTPD1 are essential for this interaction. Deletion analysis of Etk indicated that the PH domain is essential for PTPD1 interaction. Furthermore, the Etk-PTPD1 interaction stimulated the kinase activity of Etk, resulting in an increased phosphotyrosine content in both factors. The Etk-PTPD1 interaction also increased Stat3 activation. The effect of PTPD1 on Etk activation is specific since PTPD1 cannot potentiate Jak2 activity upon Stat3 activation. In addition, Tec (but not Btk) kinase can also be activated by PTPD1. Taken together, these findings indicate that PTPD1 can selectively associate with and stimulate Tec family kinases and modulate Stat3 activation.
Performance analysis of an optical packet switch with shared parametric wavelength converters

Wavelength conversion capability has been shown to significantly improve the blocking performance of all-optical networks. In order to transport payloads that may be of different bit-rates and modulation formats, a transparent wavelength conversion method is desirable. Recently, parametric wavelength converters, that are capable of multi-channel wavelength conversion for heterogeneous optical services, have been experimentally demonstrated for optical circuits. In this letter, we analyse the performance of an asynchronous optical packet-switch (OPS) architecture that exploits such devices. A sensitivity analysis of the number of converters, as a function of the main switch design parameters, demonstrate a significant reduction in the number of converters when compared with architectures employing single- channel wavelength conversion.
Molecular isoforms of murine CD44 and evidence that the membrane proximal domain is not critical for hyaluronate recognition

We previously found that the CD44 glycoprotein on some lymphocytes can mediate adhesion to hyaluronate (HA) bearing cells. However, many questions remain about the molecular heterogeneity of CD44 and mechanisms which control its recognition of this ligand. In vitro mutagenesis and DNA sequencing have now been used to investigate the importance of the membrane proximal region of murine CD44 for recognition of soluble or cell surface HA. CD44 with an 83 amino acid deletion in this region mediated binding to soluble ligand and the apparent avidity increased markedly in the presence of a particular antibody to CD44, IRAWB14. The shortened CD44 was however inefficient in mediating adhesion of transfected cells to HA immobilized on cell surfaces. Four new murine isoforms of CD44 were isolated from a carcinoma line by use of the polymerase chain reaction. Only two of them correspond to ones recently discovered in rat and human cells. The longest variant nearly doubled the length of the extracellular portion of the molecule and introduced an additional 20 potential sites for glycosylation. When expressed on T lymphoma cells, all four of the new murine CD44 isoforms were capable of mediating adhesion to HA bearing cells. This result contrasts with a report that a related human CD44 isoform lacks this ability when expressed on B lineage lymphoma cells. The new murine isoforms also conferred the ability to recognize soluble HA and were very responsive to the IRAWB14 antibody. A brief survey of normal murine cell lines and tissues revealed that the hemopoietic isoform was the most abundant species. These findings indicate that the NH2-terminal portion of CD44 is sufficient for HA recognition and that this function is not necessarily abrogated by variations which occur in the membrane proximal domain. They add to the known molecular diversity of CD44 and provide another experimental model in which isoform specific functions can be investigated.
Media Prophylaxis: Night Modes and the Politics of Preventing Harm

Abstract:This article develops the term "media prophylaxis" to analyze the ways technologies are applied to challenges of calibrating one's body with its environment and as defenses against endemic, human-made harms. In recent years, self-illuminated screens (like those of computers, phones, and tablets) have been identified by scientists, journalists, and concerned individuals as particularly pernicious sources of sleep-disrupting light. By tracing the history of circadian research, the effects of light on sleep patterns, and the recent appearance of software like "f.lux," Apple's "Night Shift," and "Twilight," this article shows how media-prophylactic technologies can individualize responsibility for preventing harm while simultaneously surfacing otherwise ignored forms of chronic suffering.
A semi-supervised cluster-and-label approach for utterance classification

In this paper, we propose a semi-supervised cluster-and-label al-gorithm for utterance classiﬁcation. The approach assumes that the underlying class distribution is roughly captured through– fully unsupervised–clustering. Then, a minimum number of labeled examples is used to automatically label the extracted clusters so that the initial label set is ”augmented” to the whole clustered data. The optimum cluster labeling is achieved by means of the Hungarian algorithm, traditionally used to solve optimization assignment problems. Finally, the augmented labeled set is applied to train an SVM classiﬁer. We compare this semi-supervised approach to a fully supervised version in which the initial labeled sets are directly used to train the SVM model.
Interplay of the Czc System and Two P-Type ATPases in Conferring Metal Resistance to Ralstonia metallidurans

ABSTRACT Cadmium and zinc are removed from cells of Ralstonia metallidurans by the CzcCBA efflux pump and by two soft-metal-transporting P-type ATPases, CadA and ZntA. The czcCBA genes are located on plasmid pMOL30, and the cadA and zntA genes are on the bacterial chromosome. Expression of zntA from R. metallidurans in Escherichia coli predominantly mediated resistance to zinc, and expression of cadA predominantly mediated resistance to cadmium. Both transporters decreased the cellular content of zinc or cadmium in this host. In the plasmid-free R. metallidurans strain AE104, single gene deletions of cadA or zntA had only a moderate effect on cadmium and zinc resistance, but zinc resistance decreased 6-fold and cadmium resistance decreased 350-fold in double deletion strains. Neither single nor double gene deletions affected zinc resistance in the presence of czcCBA. In contrast, cadmium resistance of the cadA zntA double mutant could be elevated only partially by the presence of CzcCBA. lacZ reporter gene fusions indicated that expression of cadA was induced by cadmium but not by zinc in R. metallidurans strain AE104. In the absence of the zntA gene, expression of cadA occurred at lower cadmium concentrations and zinc now served as an inducer. In contrast, expression of zntA was induced by both zinc and cadmium, and the induction pattern did not change in the presence or absence of CadA. However, expression of both genes, zntA and cadA, was diminished in the presence of CzcCBA. This indicated that CzcCBA efficiently decreased cytoplasmic cadmium and zinc concentrations. It is discussed whether these data favor a model in which the cations are removed either from the cytoplasm or the periplasm by CzcCBA.
Review on grain quantity recognition methods based on computer vision

In grain reserve automatic supervision and audit, the inevitable trend is automatic recognition of grain quantity based on computer vision. To the drawbacks of present grain quantity measurement methods, this paper brought forward a new recognition method based on laser and three-dimensional reconstruction for bulk warehouse. It summarized the implementation process of present methods based on image recognition, and analyzed the principle of the method raised by this paper. At last it compared them, and looked into the future of automatic grain quantity recognition.
Asymptotic Dynamics and Asymptotic Symmetries of Three-Dimensional Extended AdS Supergravity

Abstract We investigate systematically the asymptotic dynamics and symmetries of all three-dimensional extended AdS supergravity models. First, starting from the Chern–Simons formulation, we show explicitly that the (super)anti-de Sitter boundary conditions imply that the asymptotic symmetry algebra is the extended superconformal algebra with quadratic nonlinearies in the currents. We then derive the super-Liouville action by solving the Chern–Simons theory and obtain a realization of the superconformal algebras in terms of super-Liouville fields. Finally, we discuss the possible periodic conditions that can be imposed on the generators of the algebra and generalize the spectral flow analysed previously in the context of the N-extended linear superconformal algebras with N⩽4. The (2+1)-AdS/2-CFT correspondence sheds a new light on the properties of the nonlinear superconformal algebras. It also provides a general and natural interpretation of the spectral flow.
Exit, silence and loyalty in the Swedish social services – the importance of openness

ABSTRACT The advent of New Public Management in Sweden has affected the social services in terms of increased workload, more conflicting demands and a reduction in professional autonomy. This study contributes to the understanding of how various job demands, job resources and the organisational factor of openness influence the exit, silence and loyalty strategies amongst social workers and managers in the Swedish social services. Regression analyses of national web questionnaire data gathered from 4,068 social workers and 432 managers have revealed that: (1) role conflicts associated positively with exit and negatively with loyalty, (2) job autonomy was negatively related to silence and positively related to loyalty in both groups, (3) openness had a high explanatory value in all of the outcome variables for both groups and (4) openness was a potential mediator between role conflicts and all of the dependent variables. A conclusion is that if organisations want social workers and managers to stop considering exit, want to counteract silence and want to improve loyalty, management strategies need to be developed that reduce the conflicting demands and create organisational structures that facilitate a continuous and open dialogue between the strategic and operational levels of the organisation.
A formal logic-based language and an automated verification tool for computer forensic investigation

In this paper, a formal logic-based language, called S-TLA+, is proposed for computer forensic investigation. It allows an unambiguous description of evidences, a modeling of the forensic expert knowledge in the form of hacking scenarios fragments, and a reasoning capability with uncertainty by filling in potential lack of data with hypotheses. The proposal is complemented by an automated formal verification tool, called S-TLC which helps exploring additional evidences and checks whether there are plausible hacking scenarios that meet the available evidences.
Selection on Horizontally Transferred and Duplicated Genes in Sinorhizobium (Ensifer), the Root-Nodule Symbionts of Medicago

Structural variation, including variation in gene copy number and presence or absence of genes, is a widespread and important source of genomic variation. We used whole-genome DNA sequences from 48 strains of Sinorhizobium (recently renamed Ensifer), including 20 strains of Sinorhizobium meliloti and 12 strains of S. medicae that were the focus of the analyses, to study the fitness effects of new structural variants created by duplication and horizontal gene transfer. We find that derived duplicated and horizontally transferred (HT) genes segregate at lower frequency than synonymous and nonsynonymous nucleotide variants in S. meliloti and S. medicae. Furthermore, the relative frequencies of different types of variants are more similar in S. medicae than in S. meliloti, the species with the larger effective population size. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that most duplications and HT genes have deleterious effects. Diversity of duplications, as measured by segregating duplicated genes per gene, is greater than nucleotide diversity, consistent with a high rate of duplication. Our results suggest that the vast majority of structural variants found among closely related bacterial strains are short-lived and unlikely to be involved in species-wide adaptation.
Outlier Detection in Cross-Context Link Discovery for Creative Literature Mining

This paper investigates the role of outliers in literature-based knowledge discovery. It shows that detecting interesting outliers which appear in the literature on a given phenomenon can help the expert to find implicit relationships among concepts of different domains. The underlying assumption is that while the majority of articles in the given scientific domain describe matters related to a common understanding of the domain, the exploration of outliers may lead to the detection of scientifically interesting bridging concepts among disjoint sets of scientific articles. The proposed approach contributes to cross-context link discovery by proving the utility of outlier detection for finding bisociative links in the process of autism literature exploration, as well as by uncovering implicit relationships in the articles from the migraine domain.
Variations in Stable Carbon Isotope Composition and Leaf Traits of Picea schrenkiana var. tianschanica along an Altitude Gradient in Tianshan Mountains, Northwest China

To understand the morphological and physiological responses of leaves to changes in altitudinal gradients, we examined ten morphological and physiological characteristics in one-year-old needles of Picea schrenkiana var. tianschanica at ten points along an altitudinal gradient from 1420 to 2300 m a.s. l. on the northern slopes of the Tianshan Mountains in northwest China. Our results indicated that LA, SD, LPC, and LKC increased linearly with increasing elevation, whereas leaf δ 13C, LNC, Chla + b, LDMC, LMA, and Narea varied nonlinearly with changes in altitude. With elevation below 2100 m, LNC, Narea, and Chla + b increased, while LDMC and LMA decreased with increasing altitude. When altitude was above 2100 m, these properties showed the opposite patterns. Leaf δ 13C was positively correlated with Narea and LNC and negatively correlated with SD and LA, suggesting that leaf δ 13C was indirectly controlled by physiological and morphological adjustments along altitudinal gradients. Based on the observed maximum values in LNC, Narea, Chla + b, and LA and the minimum values in LMA and LDMC at the elevation of 2100 m, suggesting higher photosynthetic capacity and greater potential for fast growth under superior optimum zone, we concluded that the best growing elevation for P. schrenkiana var. tianschanica in the Tianshan Mountains was approximately 2100 m.
Predicting Face Recognition Performance Using Image Quality

This paper proposes a data driven model to predict the performance of a face recognition system based on image quality features. We model the relationship between image quality features (e.g. pose, illumination, etc.) and recognition performance measures using a probability density function. To address the issue of limited nature of practical training data inherent in most data driven models, we have developed a Bayesian approach to model the distribution of recognition performance measures in small regions of the quality space. Since the model is based solely on image quality features, it can predict performance even before the actual recognition has taken place. We evaluate the performance predictive capabilities of the proposed model for six face recognition systems (two commercial and four open source) operating on three independent data sets: MultiPIE, FRGC and CAS-PEAL. Our results show that the proposed model can accurately predict performance using an accurate and unbiased Image Quality Assessor (IQA). Furthermore, our experiments highlight the impact of the unaccounted quality space -- the image quality features not considered by IQA -- in contributing to performance prediction errors.
Europe: The World's Banker, 1870-1914.

tions (p. 93), the position of individuals in international law (p. 79), the posi­ tion of the Jewish Agency in Palestine (p. 100), the legal nature of the mandated communities (p. 96), and the legal effect of Council resolutions (p. 192), are dealt with. The author handles all of these questions with acuteness and penetration. The book is an important contribution to the literature of the newer international law. Q u in c y W e ig h t
A proximity-based fallback model for hybrid web recommender systems

Although there are numerous websites that provide recommendation services for various items such as movies, music, and books, most of studies on recommender systems only focus on one specific item type. As recommender sites expand to cover several types of items, though, it is important to build a hybrid web recommender system that can handle multiple types of items. The switch hybrid recommender model provides a solution to this problem by choosing an appropriate recommender system according to given selection criteria, thereby facilitating cross-domain recommendations supported by individual recommender systems. This paper seeks to answer the question of how to deal with situations where no appropriate recommender system exists to deal with a required type of item. In such cases, the switch model cannot generate recommendation results, leading to the need for a fallback model that can satisfy most users most of the time. Our fallback model exploits a graph-based proximity search, ranking every entity on the graph according to a given proximity measure. We study how to incorporate the fallback model into the switch model, and propose a general architecture and simple algorithms for implementing these ideas. Finally, we present the results of our research result and discuss remaining challenges and possibilities for future research.
Voice pathologies identification speech signals, features and classifiers evaluation

Voice pathology identification using speech processing methods can be used as a preliminary diagnosis. This study implements a set of identification systems to screen voice pathologies using voice signal features from the sustained vowel /a/ and continuous speech. The two signals tasks are evaluated using three acoustic features applied to four classifiers. Three main classes are identified: physiological disorders; neuromuscular disorders; and healthy subjects. The main objective of this work is to evaluate which voice signal is more reliable for voice pathology diagnosis, which acoustic feature has more pathology information and which is the best classifier to carry out this task. The best overall system accuracy is 77.9%, obtained with Mel-Line Spectrum Frequencies (MLSF) feature extracted from continuous speech and applied to a Gaussian Mixture Models (GMM) classifier.
In your face: facial metrics predict aggressive behaviour in the laboratory and in varsity and professional hockey players

Facial characteristics are an important basis for judgements about gender, emotion, personality, motivational states and behavioural dispositions. Based on a recent finding of a sexual dimorphism in facial metrics that is independent of body size, we conducted three studies to examine the extent to which individual differences in the facial width-to-height ratio were associated with trait dominance (using a questionnaire) and aggression during a behavioural task and in a naturalistic setting (varsity and professional ice hockey). In study 1, men had a larger facial width-to-height ratio, higher scores of trait dominance, and were more reactively aggressive compared with women. Individual differences in the facial width-to-height ratio predicted reactive aggression in men, but not in women (predicted 15% of variance). In studies 2 (male varsity hockey players) and 3 (male professional hockey players), individual differences in the facial width-to-height ratio were positively related to aggressive behaviour as measured by the number of penalty minutes per game obtained over a season (predicted 29 and 9% of the variance, respectively). Together, these findings suggest that the sexually dimorphic facial width-to-height ratio may be an ‘honest signal’ of propensity for aggressive behaviour.