Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Serial Low Doses of Sorafenib Enhance Therapeutic Efficacy of Adoptive T Cell Therapy in a Murine Model by Improving Tumor Microenvironment

Requirements of large numbers of transferred T cells and various immunosuppressive factors and cells in the tumor microenvironment limit the applications of adoptive T cells therapy (ACT) in clinic. Accumulating evidences show that chemotherapeutic drugs could act as immune supportive instead of immunosuppressive agents when proper dosage is used, and combined with immunotherapy often results in better treatment outcomes than monotherapy. Controversial immunomodulation effects of sorafenib, a multi-kinases inhibitor, at high and low doses have been reported in several types of cancer. However, what is the range of the low-dose sorafenib will influence the host immunity and responses of ACT is still ambiguous. Here we used a well-established E.G7/OT-1 murine model to understand the effects of serial low doses of sorafenib on both tumor microenvironment and transferred CD8+ T cells and the underlying mechanisms. Sorafenib lowered the expressions of immunosuppressive factors, and enhanced functions and migrations of transferred CD8+ T cells through inhibition of STAT3 and other immunosuppressive factors. CD8+ T cells were transduced with granzyme B promoter for driving imaging reporters to visualize the activation and distribution of transferred CD8+ T cells prior to adoptive transfer. Better activations of CD8+ T cells and tumor inhibitions were found in the combinational group compared with CD8+ T cells or sorafenib alone groups. Not only immunosuppressive factors but myeloid derived suppressive cells (MDSCs) and regulatory T cells (Tregs) were decreased in sorafenib-treated group, indicating that augmentation of tumor inhibition and function of CD8+ T cells by serial low doses of sorafenib were via reversing the immunosuppressive microenvironment. These results revealed that the tumor inhibitions of sorafenib not only through eradicating tumor cells but modifying tumor microenvironment, which helps outcomes of ACT significantly.
Intergroup Affect and Social Judgment: Feelings as Inadmissible Information

Affective states can influence evaluative judgments by serving as a source of information in the judgment process. Stigmatized minority groups often elicit negative affective reactions and thus may suffer from the infusion of negative feelings into evaluative judgments made about them. However, a commitment to egalitarian ideals may lead social perceivers to seek to avoid being influenced by their negative affect towards minorities. It was predicted and found that negative feelings about a stigmatized social group (gay men and lesbians) would not be evident in explicit evaluations unless situational cues are present that provide a seemingly legitimate basis for negative evaluation other than the group stigma per se. Thus, even if perceivers consider their negative feelings about minority groups to be `inadmissible information,' when these feelings can be misattributed to some seemingly relevant feature other than the target group's identity, they can indeed result in substantially more negative evaluative reactions.
Visual-Model Based Spatial Tracking in the Presence of Occlusions

A key criticism for using a template/visual-model based object-tracker is that they often lack robustness to partial occlusions. This results from the global nature of the algorithm as opposed to operating on local features as in feature-based methods. Nevertheless, visual-model based methods could have significant advantage as they can model more complex objects and use more of the available data than their feature-based counterparts. This paper presents a novel per-pixel occlusion-rejection algorithm for a spatial (3D) visual-model based object tracker. It detects occlusions based on violations of the brightness-constancy assumption of the optical-flow algorithm, which is an essential part of the tracker. Experimental results have clearly shown that using such an occlusion-rejection algorithm facilitates accurate tracking in the presence of partial occlusions that typically cause the object tracker to fail. This is achieved with no noticeable loss of performance; the frame-rate at which the object-tracker operates would remain the same.
Two Bacillus beta-mannanases having different COOH termini are produced in Escherichia coli carrying pMAH5

The nucleotide sequence was determined for the alkalophilic Bacillus sp. strain AM-001 beta-mannanase gene which produced two beta-mannanases (A and B) in Escherichia coli transformants. The putative beta-mannanase gene was 1,539 base pairs long and encoded a mature beta-mannanase protein of 487 amino acids and a signal peptide of 26 amino acids. The COOH-terminal amino acid of beta-mannanase A is an arginine residue located at amino acid 513 of the deduced amino acid sequence, and that of beta-mannanase B is a valine residue located at amino acid 365. Deletion derivatives having 1,098 base pairs from the ATG start codon maintained the beta-mannanase activity of the encoded polypeptide. However, clones harboring DNA fragments (1,051 base pairs) shorter than the gene which encoded beta-mannanase B (1,095 base pairs) did not exhibit the beta-mannanase activity. The simultaneous production of both beta-mannanases A and B in an E. coli transformant was demonstrated by the maxicell procedure.
PLASMA THYROXINE (T4) CONCENTRATION IN ZOO-KEPT BLACK-TAILED PRAIRIE DOGS (CYNOMYS LUDOVICIANUS)

Abstract This study was conducted to determine plasma thyroxine (T4) concentrations in zoo-kept black-tailed prairie dogs (Cynomys ludovicianus). Thirty-one healthy prairie dogs of both sexes were studied as part of their annual clinical health evaluation, performed under general isoflurane anesthesia. Each animal underwent a complete physical examination, complete blood count, plasma biochemistry, and venous blood gas analysis. Heparinized venous blood samples were collected individually and processed for plasma T4 analysis using a veterinary biochemistry analyzer. The median plasma T4 concentration for the prairie dogs in this study was 4.1 μg/dl (minimum = 0.6 μg/dl; maximum = 8.0 μg/dl). The mean ± standard deviation plasma T4 concentration was 4.49 ± 2.39 μg/dl. No significant differences were found for varying ages, sexes, weights, or housing systems. The data presented in this report can promote better physiologic understanding and improve clinical management of this rodent species.
A Width-Independent Fast Thinning Algorithm

The skeleton of a digital figure can often be regarded as a convenient alternative to the figure itself. It is useful both to diminish drastically the amount of data to be handled, and to simplify the computational procedures required for description and classification purposes. Thinning a digital figure down to its skeleton is a time-consuming process when conventional sequential computers are employed. The procedure we propose allows one to speed up the thinning transformation, and to get a well-shaped skeleton. After cleaning of the input picture has been performed, the pixels of the figure are labeled according to their distance from the background, and a set, whose pixels are symmetrically placed with respect to distinct contour parts of the figure, is found. This set is then given a linear structure by applying topology preserving removal operations. Finally, a pruning step, regarding branches not relevant in the framework of the problem domain, completes the process. The resulting skeleton is a labeled set of pixels which is shown to possess all the required properties, particularly those concerning connectedness, topology, and shape. Moreover, the original figure can almost completely be recovered by means of a reverse distance transformation. Only a fixed and small number of sequential passes through the picture is necessary to achieve the goal. The computational effort is rather modest, and the use of the proposed algorithm turns out to be more advantageous the greater the width of the figure to be thinned.
Ontology Development for the Semantic Web: an HTML Form-Based Reverse Engineering Approach

The rapid growth of the Internet makes information available anywhere and anytime. Most businesses run Web-based front-end databases upon which online services are offered to end-users. The next generation of the Web, the semantic Web, seeks to offer data in a usable form for automatic reasoning. To this purpose, it is necessary to make existing database content ready-to-use for semantic Web applications, which use ontologies to formally define the semantics of their data. As a result, a large number of initiatives focus on building ontologies through automatic or semi-automatic processes. In this paper we present a semi-automatic reverse engineering approach that uses a relational database's HTML forms and a set of transformation rules to produce to an OWL ontology.
Towards Collaborative Travel Recommender Systems

Collaborative filtering (CF) based recommender systems have been proven to be a promising solution to the problem of information overload. Such systems provide personalized recommendations to users based on their previously expressed preferences and that of other similar users. In the past decade, they have been successfully applied in various domains, such as the recommendation of books and movies, where items are simple, independent and single units. When applied in the tourism domain, however, CF falls short due to the simplicity of existing techniques and complexity of tourism products. In view of this, a study was carried out to review the research problems and opportunities. This paper details the results of the study, which includes a review on the recent developments in CF as well as recommender systems in tourism, and suggests future research directions for personalized recommendation of tourist destinations and products.
Plasmid-controlled mercury biotransformation by Clostridium cochlearium T-2

A strain of Clostridium cochlearium having methylmercury-decomposing ability was isolated. The ability was cured by the treatment with acridine dye and recovered by the conjugation of the cured strain with the parent strain. The cured strain then showed the activity to methylate mercuric ion as previously reported (M. Yamada and K. Tonomura, J. Ferment. Technol. 50:159-166, 1971). These results and the agarose gel electrophoretic pattern of the deoxyribonucleic acids from the lysates indicate a possible role of plasmids in controlling the mercury biotransformation of the two opposite directions in a single bacterial strain: methylation in the absence of the plasmid and demethylation in the presence of it. A possible mechanism for mercury resistance involving hydrogen sulfide is discussed.
Endocrine-Immune-Paracrine Interactions in Prostate Cells as Targeted by Phytomedicines

Dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA) is used as a dietary supplement and can be metabolized to androgens and/or estrogens in the prostate. We investigated the hypothesis that DHEA metabolism may be increased in a reactive prostate stroma environment in the presence of proinflammatory cytokines such as transforming growth factor β1 (TGFβ1), and further, whether red clover extract, which contains a variety of compounds including isoflavones, can reverse this effect. LAPC-4 prostate cancer cells were grown in coculture with prostate stromal cells (6S) and treated with DHEA +/− TGFβ1 or interleukin-6. Prostate-specific antigen (PSA) expression and testosterone secretion in LAPC-4/6S cocultures were compared with those in monocultured epithelial and stromal cells by real-time PCR and/or ELISA. Combined administration of TGFβ1 + DHEA to cocultures increased PSA protein secretion two to four times, and PSA gene expression up to 50-fold. DHEA + TGFβ1 also increased coculture production of testosterone over DHEA treatment alone. Red clover isoflavone treatment led to a dose-dependent decrease in PSA protein and gene expression and testosterone metabolism induced by TGFβ1 + DHEA in prostate LAPC-4/6S cocultures. In this coculture model of endocrine-immune-paracrine interactions in the prostate, TGFβ1 greatly increased stromal-mediated DHEA effects on testosterone production and epithelial cell PSA production, whereas red clover isoflavones reversed these effects.
Design of MAC protocols with fast collision resolution for wireless local area networks

Development of efficient medium access control (MAC) protocols providing both high throughput performance for data traffic and good quality of service (QoS) support for real-time traffic is the current major focus in distributed contention-based MAC protocol research. In this paper, we propose an efficient contention resolution algorithm for wireless local area networks, namely, the fast collision resolution (FCR) algorithm. The MAC protocol with this new algorithm attempts to provide significantly higher throughput performance for data services than the IEEE 802.11 MAC algorithm and more advanced dynamic tuning backoff (DTB) algorithm. We demonstrate that this algorithm indeed resolves collisions faster and reduces the idle slots more effectively. To provide good fairness performance and to support good QoS for real-time traffic, we incorporate the self-clocked fair queueing algorithm and a priority scheme into the FCR algorithm and come up with the real-time FCR (RT-FCR) algorithm, and show that RT-FCR can simultaneously achieve high throughput and good fairness performance for nonreal-time traffic while maintaining satisfactory QoS support for real-time traffic.
The French Self-Perception Profile for Children: Score Validity and Reliability

Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was used to evaluate the factorial structure underlying the French Self-Perception Profile for Children (SPPC). The factorial validity of the five domain-specific subscales-scholastic competence, social acceptance, athletic competence, physical appearance, and behavioral conduct-was tested for 225 4th-grade, 272 5th-grade, and 282 6th-grade children in Ottawa. That the initially hypothesized CFA models were not validated led to post hoc model fitting to establish a final and a baseline model for each grade-level cohort. Final models were rejected in favor of more parsimonious baseline models for the 4th-, 5th-, and 6th-grade cohorts. Internal consistency and item reliability values raised some questions about the reliability of scores on the measure across grade levels. Overall, considering the stringency of the LISREL 7 program, the French SPPC demonstrated reasonably sound psychometric properties.
Political crime and the case of young neo‐nazis: A question of methodology

This article critically analyses some of the traditional scholarship that deals with the rise of ultra‐right politics and the requisites for the emergence of such collective action. It is argued that such approaches have limited explanatory value for understanding why people commit political crimes. The question is asked whether traditional concerns with locating causes and the tendency to offer structural determinants (such as social dislocation and high levels of unemployment) provide the best explanations for the appeal of such politics. The article continues by developing a rationale and framework for an alternative interpretative or hermeneutic approach to research on contemporary Nazism.
A Consensus-Based Protocol for Spectrum Sharing Fairness in Cognitive Radio Ad Hoc and Sensor Networks

Spectrum sharing fairness is an important topic in cognitive radio ad hoc networks (CRAHNs) and cognitive radio sensor networks (CRSNs). Consensus-based protocols can provide light-weight and efficient solutions for CRAHNs and CRSNs but the theoretical ground needs to be investigated for spectrum sharing fairness. In this paper, we investigate the convergence condition when applying a consensus-based protocol to spectrum sharing while ensuring spectrum sharing fairness. Based on the local observation and local control scheme using spectrum-related information, an individual cognitive node can effectively perform the spectrum sharing. Then we propose a consensus-based protocol for spectrum sharing. Supported with computer simulation results, we show the effectiveness of using the proposed consensus-based protocol to solve the spectrum sharing problems in CRAHNs and CRSNs.
Fungal Community Successions in Rhizosphere Sediment of Seagrasses Enhalus acoroides under PAHs Stress

Seagrass meadows represent one of the highest productive marine ecosystems and are of great ecological and economic values. Recently, they have been confronted with worldwide decline. Fungi play important roles in sustaining the ecosystem health as degraders of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), but fewer studies have been conducted in seagrass ecosystems. Hence, we investigated the dynamic variations of the fungal community succession under PAH stress in rhizosphere sediment of seagrasses Enhalus acoroides in this study. Polymerase chain reaction-denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (PCR-DGGE), quantitative PCR (qPCR) and a clone library have been employed to analyze the fungal community’s shifts. Sequencing results of DGGE and the clone library showed that the predominant species belong to phyla Ascomycota and Basidiomycota. The abundance of three groups decreased sharply over the incubation period, whereas they demonstrated different fungal diversity patterns. Both the exposure time and the PAH concentrations affected the microbial diversity as assessed by PCR-DGGE analysis. Redundancy analysis (RDA) indicated that significant factors driving community shifts were ammonium and pH (p < 0.05). Significant amounts of the variations (31.1%) were explained by pH and ammonium, illustrating that those two parameters were the most likely ones to influence or be influenced by the fungal communities’ changes. Investigation results also indicated that fungal communities in seagrass meadow were very sensitive to PAH-induced stress and may be used as potential indicators for the PAH contamination.
Effects of Different Oral Doses of Sodium Chloride on the Basal Acid-Base and Mineral Status of Exercising Horses Fed Low Amounts of Hay

The provision of NaCl, according to current recommendations, to horses in moderate work has been shown to induce immediate postprandial acidosis. The present study aimed to clarify whether this NaCl induced acidosis i) persists beyond the immediate postprandial period, and ii) is still present after a 2 week adaptation period. Six adult warmblood mares in moderate work received daily 1.00 kg hay per 100 kg body weight (bwt) only together with 0.64 kg unprocessed cereal grains/100 kg bwt.d as fed basis. Using a 3x3 Latin Square, either 0 (NaCl-0), 50 (NaCl-50) or 100 (NaCl-100) g NaCl/d were fed together with the concentrates in two equal doses for 3 weeks. During the final week, a mineral digestibility trial was undertaken. The middle sodium and chloride intake (NaCl-50) at least met the most common recommendations for moderate work. Morning (7:00 AM) urine and venous blood samples were collected on days 0, 1–4, 8, and 15, and analysed for pH, acid-base status, creatinine and electrolyte concentrations. Fractional electrolyte clearances (FC) were determined. Mean apparent sodium digestibility ranged between 60–62% whereas chloride digestibility was consistently above 94%. Supplementing 100 g but not 50 g of NaCl resulted in significant reduction of blood pH and base excess as well as urinary pH and urine acid excretion. Both 50 g and 100 g NaCl supplementation caused a significant reduction in base and net acid-base excretion, urine density and potassium concentration, but increased urine sodium concentration and the FC of sodium and chloride (P < 0.05). This suggests that a high proportion of the recommended salt doses is excreted renally. The above effects of NaCl supplementation persisted over the 2 week measurement period. Results suggest that feeding 100 g NaCl to moderately exercising horses results in mild metabolic acidosis, whereas feeding 50 g according to current recommendations resulted in compensated acidosis.
Analyse de l'activité électrique multi-sites du cortex auditif chez le cobaye

La problematique qui a motive cette etude est celle de la representation et du traitement de l'information dans le neocortex. On s'interesse en particulier a l'hypothese selon laquelle l'information sensorielle est representee par un "code" spatio-temporel dans l'activite cooperative des populations neuronales. Cette etude est fondamentale pour le developpement de solutions technologiques a certains problemes medicaux (e.g. neuroprotheses). La disponibilite de nouvelles techniques de mesure multi-sites qui permettent d'observer l'activite spatiotemporelle du cortex a de hautes resolutions, nous donne l'occasion d'aborder la notion "d'interaction neuronale" a des echelles mesoscopiques et d'etudier les mecanismes de la sensation et de la perception au niveau des aires fonctionnelles. Nous nous sommes interesses a l'activite electrique du cortex auditif en reponse aux stimuli sonores, observee in vivo chez le cobaye a l'aide de colorants fluorescents potentiel-dependants. Nous avons etudie des methodes pour le traitement, l'analyse et la compression/integration de l'information spatio-temporelle, adaptees a ce type de donnees. Une analyse descriptive nous a permit de caracteriser les signaux recueillis, ainsi que leur variabilite et les erreurs qui nuisent a la mesure. Une etude theorique est venue completer cette description et a permit d'interpreter nos donnees par rapport a l'activite neuronale sous-jacente. Le signal de fluorescence est difficile a traiter avec des techniques classiques de traitement du signal, nous avons donc utilise des techniques basees sur la transformee en ondelettes afin d'estimer et de caracteriser l'activite d'origine neuronale. Finalement, nous avons analyse quelques approches pour la modelisation spatio-temporelle de l'activite du cortex, et nous avons etudie l'adequation de ces modeles a nos donnees. Des elements de methode pour l'etude de cette problematique et des perspectives pour les experiences futures sont avances.
Variations in professions’ adaption of quality reforms: The cases of doctors and auditors in Sweden

This article investigates variations in two professions’ adaption of quality reforms. The adaption of reforms is viewed as a part of the professions’ legitimacy and identity processes. Literature in the area suggests that the adaption of reforms is influenced by the profession’s knowledge base, professional norms, organizational belonging and organizational field. The two cases here on how doctors and auditors adapt to quality reforms show that the influences of these factors are, however, moulded by the professions’ strategies and the salience of the different aforementioned factors. A general conclusion is that compatibility between the bases of knowledge and the professional norms are vital for the adaption of reforms and that organizational fields are important for setting the agenda. Organizational belongings, on the other hand, seem of less importance for adaption of quality reforms.
A robust parametric method for signal reconstruction

In the context of signal reconstruction and coding, a new robust parametric formulation to linear predictive coding (LPC) is introduced. The linear prediction filter coefficients are transformed into a set of weighted line frequencies. The positive weights play the dual role of a new set of parameters and simultaneously they exhibit the relative importance of the associated line frequencies. This new representation for LPC is shown to be always stable under quantization.