Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Heteroclitic XBP1 peptides evoke tumor-specific memory cytotoxic T lymphocytes against breast cancer, colon cancer, and pancreatic cancer cells

XBP1 is a critical transcriptional activator of the unfolded protein response (UPR), which increases tumor cell survival under prolonged endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress and hypoxic conditions.This study was designed to evaluate the immunogenicity of heteroclitic XBP1 unspliced (US)184–192 (YISPWILAV) and heteroclictic XBP1 spliced (SP)367–375 (YLFPQLISV) HLA-A2 peptides, and to characterize the specific activities of XBP1 peptides-specific cytotoxic T lymphocytes (XBP1-CTL) against breast cancer, colon cancer, and pancreatic cancer cells.The XBP1-CTL had upregulated expression of critical T cell markers and displayed HLA-A2-restricted and antigen-specific activities against breast cancer, colon cancer and pancreatic cancer cells. XBP1-CTL were enriched withCD45RO+ memory CTL, which showed high expression of critical T cell markers (CD28, ICOS, CD69, CD40L), cell proliferation and antitumor activities as compared to CD45RO− non-memory CTL. The effector memory (EM: CD45RO+CCR7−) subset had the highest level of cell proliferation while the central memory (CM: CD45RO+CCR7+) subset demonstrated enhanced functional activities (CD107a degranulation, IFNγ/IL-2 production) upon recognition of the respective tumor cells. Furthermore, both the EM and CM XBP1-CTL subsets expressed high levels of Th1 transcription regulators Tbet and Eomes. The highest frequencies of IFNγ or granzyme B producing cells were detected within CM XBP1-CTL subset that were either Tbet+ or Eomes+ in responding to the tumor cells.These results demonstrate the immunotherapeutic potential of a cocktail of immunogenic HLA-A2 specific heteroclitic XBP1 US184–192 and heteroclictic XBP1 SP367–375 peptides to induce CD3+CD8+ CTL enriched for CM and EM cells with specific antitumor activities against a variety of solid tumors.
Physical activity and stroke. A meta-analysis of observational data.

BACKGROUND Based on studies published so far, the protective effect of physical activity on stroke remains controversial. Specifically, there is a lack of insight into the sources of heterogeneity between studies. METHODS Meta-analysis of observational studies was used to quantify the relationship between physical activity and stroke and to explore sources of heterogeneity. In total, 31 relevant publications were included. Risk estimates and study characteristics were extracted from original studies and converted to a standard format for use in a central database. RESULTS Moderately intense physical activity compared with inactivity, showed a protective effect on total stroke for both occupational (RR = 0.64, 95% CI: 0.48-0.87) and leisure time physical activity (RR = 0.85, 95% CI: 0.78-0.93). High level occupational physical activity protected against ischaemic stroke compared with both moderate (RR = 0.77, 95% CI: 0.60-0.98) and inactive occupational levels (RR = 0.57, 95% CI: 0.43-0.77). High level compared with low level leisure time physical activity protected against total stroke (RR = 0.78, 95% CI: 0.71-0.85), haemorrhagic stroke (RR = 0.74, 95% CI: 0.57-0.96) as well as ischaemic stroke (RR = 0.79, 95% CI: 0.69-0.91). Studies conducted in Europe showed a stronger protective effect (RR = 0.47, 95% CI: 0.33-0.66) than studies conducted in the US (RR = 0.82, 95% CI: 0.75-0.90). CONCLUSIONS Lack of physical activity is a modifiable risk factor for both total stroke and stroke subtypes. Moderately intense physical activity is sufficient to achieve risk reduction.
Health Reform: What have we learned and were to next!

Recently I was talking to a colleague of mine from Hong Kong and he reminded me that Hong Kong had had 28 years of health reform. A period just slightly longer than we had known each other. We are deeply imbued in the management and organisation of health services and health systems and, therefore public health policy. He suggested that there should be a lot of learning for us all from that period and, he was exploring how that might happen. I agreed with the idea and the need to think it through. I also recognised potential for the Journal to play some role in that suggestion. Most national health systems have undergone extensive reform so there should be a lot of learning for all of us from that reform.
Evaluation of left atrial functions in children with chronic renal failure.

OBJECTIVE One-quarter of deaths in children with chronic renal failure is due to cardiovascular complications. Conventional echocardiographic methods are insufficient for evaluating systolic functions in children with chronic renal failure. The aim of the present study was to investigate cardiac functions in children with chronic renal failure by evaluating left atrial volume and functions. METHODS The present cross-sectional observational study included 44 children undergoing dialysis, 16 children with chronic renal failure but not yet on dialysis, and 20 healthy control subjects. Transthoracic echocardiography was performed for all children. Variables regarding to left ventricle and atrium (left atrial systolic force, left atrial systolic force index, left atrial volume, left ventricular mass index, and relative wall thickness) were measured using two-dimensional and M-mode echocardiography. RESULTS Left atrial systolic force index was negatively correlated with systolic blood pressure and left ventricular mass (p=0.01, r=0.266 and p=0.02, r=0.347, respectively). However, it was positively correlated with both early and late diastolic mitral inflow velocity (r=0.518, p=0.001 and r=0.828, p=0.001, respectively). There were no significant difference among the groups in terms of left atrial systolic force index and left atrial volume. However, left atrial systolic force index was higher in children with chronic renal failure but not yet on dialysis. CONCLUSION Left atrial systolic force was negatively correlated with systolic blood pressure and left ventricular mass. These findings suggested that evaluating left atrial systolic force and left atrial volume were useful to determine diastolic dysfunction and the necessity of dialysis in patient with chronic renal failure.
Formation of Pancreatic Duct Epithelium from Bone Marrow During Neonatal Development

Recent reports suggest that bone marrow–derived cells engraft and differentiate into pancreatic tissue at very low frequency after pancreatic injury. All such studies have used adult recipients. The aim of our studies was to investigate the potential of bone marrow to contribute to the exocrine and endocrine components of the pancreas during the normal rapid growth of the organ that occurs during the neonatal period. Five to ten million bone marrow cells from adult, male, transgenic, green fluorescent protein (GFP) mice were injected into neonatal nonobese diabetic/severely compromised immunodeficient/β2microglobulin‐null mice 24 hours after birth. Two months after bone marrow transplantation, pancreas tissue was analyzed with fluorescence immunohistochemistry and fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH). Co‐staining of GFP, with anticytokeratin antibody, and with FISH for the presence of donor Y chromosome indicated that up to 40% of ducts (median 4.6%) contained epithelial cells derived from donor bone marrow. In some of these donor‐derived ducts, there were clusters of large and small ducts, all comprised of GFP+ epithelium, suggesting that whole branching structures were derived from donor bone marrow. In addition, rare cells that coexpressed GFP and insulin were found within islets. Unlike pancreatic damage models, no bone marrow–derived vascular endothelial cells were found. In contrast to the neonatal recipients, bone marrow transplanted into adult mice rarely generated ductal epithelium or islet cells (p < .05 difference between adult and neonate transplants). These findings demonstrate the existence in bone marrow of pluripotent stem cells or epithelial precursors that can migrate to the pancreas and differentiate into complex organ‐specific structures during the neonatal period.
Privacy preserving vehicular trajectory prediction

Location based services (LBS) provide many valuable and important services for end users but reveal information about personal location to potentially untrustworthy service providers which could pose privacy concerns. The information about exact path followed by a person is highly personal and can be used to uniquely identify a person. Such information is known as personally identifiable information (PII). Disclosing such information can be considered as breach of privacy. Data needs to be transformed in such a way that either PII is removed or cannot be inferred preserving the accuracy of inferences at the same time. Differential Privacy [1] is a widely used techniques for removing PII from the data. It aims to provide means to maximize the accuracy of queries from statistical databases while minimizing the chances of identifying its records. This work aims at studying the impact of transforming the data on its utility. We have used two differentially privacy techniques Laplace perturbation and sliding moving average noise reduction on trajectories of taxi [2]. This dataset is used to predict the final destination (latitude and longitude) of taxi trips. These differential privacy techniques maintain the utility of this dataset along with the preservation of the trajectory privacy of individuals.
Energy transfer efficiency on lymphocytes of leukemia patients measured by fluorescence polarization

Measurements of fluorescence resonance energy transfer efficiency (E), via fluorescence polarization, have been applied to distinguish between chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) patients and healthy persons. Capping of Concanavalin-A receptors is more pronounced in normal lymphocytes than in those of CLL patients. Membrane capping decreases the distance between donor and acceptor molecules embedded in the membrane (r), and thus increases the monitored energy transfer efficiency (E∼1/r6). Blood samples of 10 healthy subjects and 16 CLL patients were examined. In the healthy subjects, the mean E value for capped lymphocytes was 19 ± 3, whereas in the CLL patients it was significantly lower (8 ± 5) (P < 0.01).
Towards an Ontology-Based Semantic Approach to Tuning Parameters to Improve Hadoop Application Performance

Hadoop MapReduce assists companies andresearchers to deal with processing large volumes of data.Hadoop has a lot of configuration parameters that must betuned in order to obtain a better application performance.However, the best tuning of the parameters is not easilyobtained by inexperienced users. Therefore, it is necessary tocreate environments that promote and motivate informationsharing and knowledge dissemination. In addition, it isimportant that all acquired knowledge be organized to bereused faster, easily and efficiently whenever necessary. Thispaper proposes an ontology-based semantic approach totuning parameters to improve Hadoop applicationperformance. The approach integrates techniques frommachine learning, semantic search and ontologies.
Metal-Gate/High-$\kappa$/Ge nMOS at Small CET With Higher Mobility Than $\hbox{SiO}_{2}/\hbox{Si}$ at Wide Range Carrier Densities

High-performance TaN/TiLaO/La<sub>2</sub>O<sub>3</sub>/SiO<sub>2</sub>/ (111)-Ge nMOSFETs show high mobility of 432 cm<sup>2</sup>/V ·s at 10<sup>13</sup> cm<sup>-2</sup> carrier density (<i>Ns</i>), good 1.05 junction ideality factor, and small subthreshold swing of 101 mV/dec, at a small 1.1-nm capacitance-equivalent thickness (CET). This is the first report of higher mobility in the Ge nMOSFET than SiO<sub>2</sub>/Si universal mobility at wide medium-high <i>Ns</i> range and small CET of 1.1 nm, which is attributed to using the (111)-Ge substrate, 30-ns laser annealing, SiO<sub>2</sub> interfacial layer, and YbGe<i>x</i>/n-Ge contact.
Hypoxia reduces the hypothalamic thermogenic threshold and thermosensitivity

Hypoxia is well known to reduce the body temperature (Tb) of mammals, although the neural origins of this response remain uncertain. Short‐term hypoxic exposure causes a reduction in the lower critical temperature of the thermal neutral zone and a reduction in whole body thermal conductance of rodents, providing indirect support that hypoxia lowers Tb in a regulated manner. In this study, we examined directly the potential for changes in central thermosensitivity to evoke the hypoxic metabolic response by heating and cooling the preoptic area of the hypothalamus (the area which integrates thermoreceptor input and regulates thermoeffector outputs) using chronic, indwelling thermodes in ground squirrels during normoxia and hypoxia (7, 10 and 12% O2). We found that the threshold hypothalamic temperature for the metabolic response to cooling (Tth) of ∼38°C in normoxia was proportionately reduced in hypoxia (down to 28–31°C at 7% O2) and that the metabolic thermosensitivity (α; the change in metabolic rate for any given change in hypothalamic temperature below the lower critical temperature) was comparatively reduced by 5 to 9 times. This provides strong support for the hypothesis that the fall in temperature that occurs during hypoxia is the result of a reduction in the activation of thermogenic mechanisms. The decrease in the central thermosensitivity in hypoxia, however, appears to be a critical factor in the alteration of mammalian Tb. We suggest, therefore, that an altered central thermosensitivity may provide a proximate explanation of how low oxygen and similar stressors reduce normal fluctuations in Tb (i.e. circadian), in addition to the depression in regulated Tb.
Statistical-Physical Models of Electromagnetic Interference

Most man-made and natural electromagnetic interference, or "noise," are highly non-Gaussian random processes, whose degrading effects on system performance can be severe, particularly on most conventional systems, which are designed for optimal or near optimal performance against normal noise. In addition, the nature, origins, measurement, and prediction of the general EM interference environment are a major concern of any adequate spectral management program. Accordingly, this study is devoted to the development of analytically tractable, experimentally verifiable, statistical-physical models of such electromagnetic interference. Here, classification into three major types of noise is made: Class A (narrow band vis-á-vis the receiver), Class B (broad band vis-á-vis the receiver), and Class C (= Class A + Class B). First-order statistical models are constructed for the Class A and Class B cases. In particular, the APD (a posteriori probability distribution) or exceedance probability, PD, vis;P1 (¿ > ¿o)A,B, (and the associated probability densities, pdf's w1(¿)A,B,[1]) of the envelope are obtained; (the phase is shown to be uniformly distributed in (0, 2¿). These results are canonical, i.e., their analytic forms are invariant of the particular noise source and its quantifying parameter values, levels, etc. Class A interference is described by a 3-parameter model, Class B noise by a 6-parameter model.
Telomere Length in Hepatocellular Carcinoma and Paired Adjacent Non-Tumor Tissues by Quantitative PCR

Telomere shortening limits the proliferative capacity of human cells, restrains the regenerative capacity of organ systems during chronic diseases and aging and also induces chromosomal instability as well as initiation of cancer. Previous studies demonstrated that telomeres are often significantly shorter in tumor tissue, including hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), compared to the surrounding tissue, but telomere length in HCC tissues was not correlated with several clinical parameters, such as age, sex, HBV or HCV infections and tumor size. In the present study, the telomere length ratio of 36 paired HCC, and their adjacent non-tumor tissues was measured by quantitative PCR (Q-PCR). The mean telomere lengths (SD) for HCC and adjacent non-tumor tissues were 0.26 (0.10) and 0.47 (0.20) respectively (t = 6.22, P < 0.0001). There was a large difference in the distribution of subjects based on telomere length in tumor and adjacent non-tumor tissues. The number of tumors with telomere length shorter than 0.50 was much higher than that of adjacent non-tumor tissues; more than 90% of the tissues with telomere length ≥ 0.50 were adjacent non-tumor tissues. The correlations between telomere length and aflatoxin B1- and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon-DNA adducts level, p53 mutations and p16 hypermethylation status were also tested, but no significant associations were found. The relationship between telomere length shortening, chemical carcinogen exposure, and genetic and epigenetic changes in hepatocarcinogenesis needs further investigation.
Impact of two independent bone marrow samples on minimal residual disease monitoring in childhood acute lymphoblastic leukaemia

Minimal residual disease (MRD) diagnostics are used for risk group stratification in several acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL) treatment protocols. It is, however, unclear whether MRD is homogeneously distributed within the bone marrow (BM) and whether this affects MRD diagnostics. We, therefore, analysed MRD levels in 141 paired BM samples (two independent punctures at different locations) from 26 ALL patients by real‐time quantitative polymerase chain reaction (PCR) analysis of immunoglobulin and T‐cell receptor gene rearrangements. MRD levels were comparable in 112 paired samples (79%), whereas two samples (both taken at day 15) had MRD levels that differed more than threefold. In the remaining 27 paired samples, MRD could be quantified or detected in one sample only. In four patients, MRD‐based risk group classification was dependent on the site of BM puncture. Repetition of MRD analyses using 10‐fold replicates instead of triplicates resolved most differences. In conclusion, MRD levels in paired BM samples were highly comparable, indicating that it is sufficient to analyse MRD in a single sample only. Nevertheless, MRD‐based risk group classification can differ between paired BM samples, mainly because of variation below the quantitative range of the PCR assay rather than to a different distribution of leukaemic cells within the BM.
Modeling and Policy Study for Information Asymmetry Problem of Photovoltaic Module Quality in China

ABSTRACT With the growing concern over climate change and aided by technology development, photovoltaic (PV) installation has risen rapidly in China. Because PV modules are fully packed and the sites for PV installation may be remote from investors, it is difficult for investors to determine the actual quality of PV modules. To simulate the information asymmetry of PV quality and its impacts on market reaction, an agent-based model at social network scale is applied based on the data of Chinese PV market. To mitigate the quality problem while expanding the financing scale for PV projects, two policy options are proposed, including information disclosure and penalties. The simulation results indicate that investors are more sensitive to the negative attitudes of surrounding people, and that raising dividend ratios will drive both defaults and joining ratios higher. We further discuss policy implications of findings to ensure the prosperity of the PV financing market and the high quality of PV systems at the same time.
RECURRENT HAEMOPHAGOCYTIC SYNDROME IN AN HIV-INFECTED PATIENT

Abstract We describe a case of recurrent haemophagocytic syndrome (HS) in an HIV-infected patient. The first episode was associated with active human herpesvirus 8 infection and progressive Kaposi’s sarcoma which was successfully treated with splenectomy, foscarnet and chemotherapy. The second episode was triggered by a Clostridium difficile colitis and resolved completely after treatment with metronidazole only. Recurrent HS has rarely been described in adult patients out of the setting of relapsing malignancy or autoimmune disease. The chronic immune dysregulation and suppression due to HIV-infection may predispose our patient to development of associated HS. Prognosis of HS remains poor, especially in HIV-infected patients. Rapidly unmasking the causative factor and timely instauration of adequate treatment are critical and may improve outcome.
Activation of alpha‐2 noradrenergic receptors is critical for the generation of fictive eupnea and fictive gasping inspiratory activities in mammals in vitro

Biogenic amines are not just ‘modulators’, they are often essential for the execution of behaviors. Here, we explored the role of biogenic amines acting on the pre‐Bötzinger complex (pre‐BötC), an area located in the ventrolateral medulla which is critical for the generation of different forms of breathing. Isolated in transverse slices from mice, this region continues to spontaneously generate rhythmic activities that resemble normal (eupneic) inspiratory activity in normoxia and gasping in hypoxia. We refer to these as ‘fictive eupneic’ and ‘fictive gasping’ activity. When exposed to hypoxia, the pre‐BötC transitions from a network state relying on calcium‐activated nonspecific cation currents (ICAN) and persistent sodium currents (INap) to one that primarily depends on the INap current. Here we show that in inspiratory neurons INap‐dependent bursting, blocked by riluzole, but not ICAN‐dependent bursting, required endogenously released norepinephrine acting on alpha2‐noradrenergic receptors (α2‐NR). At the network level, fictive eupneic activity persisted while fictive gasping ceased following the blockade of α2‐NR. Blockade of α2‐NR eliminated fictive gasping even in slice preparations as well as in inspiratory island preparations. Blockade of fictive gasping by α2‐NR antagonists was prevented by activation of 5‐hydroxytryptamine type 2A receptors (5‐HT2A). Our data suggest that gasping depends on the converging aminergic activation of 5‐HT2AR and α2‐NR acting on riluzole‐sensitive mechanisms that have been shown to be crucial for gasping.
Transformer Diagnosis Approach using Frequency Response Analysis Method

Power transformers are one of the main parts in the electric distribution grid. Electric utilities are really interested in their maintenance because of the critical nature of the failure. Many preventive techniques have been developed to know the state of the transformer, e.g., dissolved gas analysis or tgdelta measurement. Frequency response analysis has been proved as an effective predictive technique and one of the most accurate detecting winding displacements. However, in spite of being a well established and widely used technique, an accurate diagnosis procedure by means of FRA has not been achieved yet. It is possible to know if a fault has occurred but FRA is not able to detect accurately the causes. Our research group has been working in the last years in a model transformer and a diagnosis procedure based on its frequency response. This paper presents the proposed diagnostic procedure and the different steps in which it is divided. Besides, it emphasizes the researches obtained in the diagnosis procedure and shows some experimental results