Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Accessory and stimulating properties of dendritic cells and macrophages isolated from various rat tissues

Single cell suspensions of rat lymphoid and nonlymphoid tissues were fractionated on discontinuous gradients of bovine serum albumin into high density and low density subfractions. In general, accessory activity required for responses of periodate-treated T lymphocytes was recovered only in a low density population containing a small percent of the total fractionated cells from lymph nodes, spleen, liver, skin, and peritoneal exudates. Further purification always led to an increase of both accessory activity and number of dendritic cells present in nonrosetting and nonadherent populations. After purification, a high recovery of the total accessory activity was found in fractions that contained a high percentage of dendritic cells resulting in a more than 1,000-fold enrichment in accessory activity per cell. No other fraction obtained during the purification contained significant accessory activity. In all cases, macrophage-enriched populations lacked accessory cell activity. With the exception of peritoneal exudate cell preparations, which contained an inhibitory cell, the level of accessory activity in a given population was always found to be a function of the number of dendritic cells present. Dendritic cells from all sources were nonadherent, nonphagocytic, radio- resistant, and nonspecific esterase negative. They expressed Ia antigens and lacked Fc receptors. Both epidermal and lymph node dendritic cells contain Birbeck granules, subcellular structures previously described only for Langerhans cells. Accessory activity requires viable dendritic cells but is unaffected by 1,000 rad of γ-irradiation. However, ultraviolet irradiation abolished the activity of accessory cells. The cells that responded to periodate were IgG-negative T cells, whereas IgG-positive B cells could not be stimulated under the same conditions. Only periodate-treated T cells and dendritic cells were needed for responses to occur; removal of virtually all macrophages from these purified preparations had no effect. Dendritic cells were also required as stimulators in mixed leukocyte cultures, whereas macrophages, even though Ia positive, were inert.
Lessons learned from transferring software products to India

Globalization has influenced the way software is developed today, and many software organizations have started to actively utilize resources from around the world. However, these endeavors are recognized as very challenging, and they have attracted a lot of attention in software research in the past decade. Unlike many other research initiatives, which explore the complexities of distributed software development activities, the focus of this paper is on software transfers. Software transfers refer to activities that are moved from one location to another. The authors draw attention to the lessons learned from an empirical investigation of two transfer projects conducted at Ericsson. Both transfers were performed between a site in Sweden and a site in India. The observations outline a set of generic practices that have been found useful for transferring software development within a company. It also highlights a number of challenges to be addressed and a set of corresponding recommendations. Finally, the paper emphasizes the need to identify software products that are suitable for transfers and the need to monitor the long‐term effects of transfer. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Matching architecture to application via configurable processors: a case study with boolean satisfiability problem

Boolean Satisfiability (SAT) is a classical NP-complete problem with both theoretical and practical interests. This paper presents our work in developing an application-specific processor for SAT based on a commercial configurable processor core. We customize the processor configuration and design new instruction extensions based on the data structure and atomic operations used in SAT. The customized processor has achieved around 24 /spl times/ speedup at a very low hardware cost. The small size of the processor makes it possible to integrate multiple processors and other customized logic into a single chip for an application-specific multiprocessor solution for SAT. Our work shows the strength of application-specific processing in accelerating applications with complex control and dynamic data structures - an area that has traditionally not been targeted by application-specific processing. It also demonstrates that configurable processor cores can be used to cut the development time and cost for designing and building such application-specific processors.
Facial Expression Recognition Based-On Saliency Guided Support Vector Machine

Facial expression recognition in complex environment is one of the difficult tasks of visual recognition in recent years. This paper introduces the visual saliency mechanism and we design automatic searching of the face region in the image. Using the narrow band C-V model to evolve curve, the proposed scheme can obtain the accurate face region. Meanwhile, the SVM will be trained by standard database. It will calculate the Bhattacharyya distance between the clustering center and the face sample which is extracted from complex environment and then updating the parameters of SVM. Finally, the performance of the classifier will be obtained through testing the test set. Experimental results on lighting change or noisy added image in complex environment confirm the validity of our approach.
MIGRANT'S DOMESTIC WORK AND REMITTANCES: THE RESULTS OF AN EMPIRICAL STUDY

The migration is a complex phenomenon which causes a range of effects in the host countries as in homeland. Every day, a lot of people moves from one country to another for economic or political reasons, with or without a visa, and this unstoppable flow gives birth to problems that are often difficult to solve. If the role of migrates is important for the host countries, it will be essential to check which is the advantage that can result in homeland. Even considering that the international movement of labour, especially the qualified one, may be a limit to the growth of homeland, it cannot recognize the weight that remittances can have for its realization. Migrant women, employed mainly in domestic work, support the shortcomings of the welfare systems of host countries and contribute in homeland to improve families and, from a certain point of view, the local economy. This work is organized in a theoretical and empirical part, which is based on a direct investigation on the Region Apulia’s capital. The purpose of this paper is to check if remittances, mostly undervalued because much more is believed through informal channels, results in consumption and / or productive investment.
Negative and competitive social interactions are related to heightened proinflammatory cytokine activity

Research has consistently documented that social relationships influence physical health, a link that may implicate systemic inflammation. We examined whether daily social interactions predict levels of proinflammatory cytokines IL-6 and the soluble receptor for tumor necrosis factor-α (sTNFαRII) and their reactivity to a social stressor. One-hundred twenty-two healthy young adults completed daily diaries for 8 d that assessed positive, negative, and competitive social interactions. Participants then engaged in laboratory stress challenges, and IL-6 and sTNFαRII were collected at baseline and at 25- and 80-min poststressor, from oral mucosal transudate. Negative social interactions predicted elevated sTNFαRII at baseline, and IL-6 and sTNFαRII 25-min poststressor, as well as total output of sTNFαRII. Competitive social interactions predicted elevated baseline levels of IL-6 and sTNFαRII and total output of both cytokines. These findings suggest that daily social interactions that are negative and competitive are associated prospectively with heightened proinflammatory cytokine activity.
Study on the System Optimization of Inventory Management of SME

With the severer and severer market competition, more and more enterprises pay attention to informationization construction, and even some domestic small and middle enterprises (SME) also take the management of suppliers and customers into their informationization construction system. However, when enhancing exterior informationization construction, enterprises always ignore their inventory management and optimization measure. Therefore, the paper analyzed in detail inventory management of SME, and put forward five kinds of optimization schemes of value-added network based on internet, which will be helpful for enterprises to participate in international competition.
The chondriome of selected trypanosomatids. A three-dimensional study based on serial thick sections and high voltage electron microscopy

The unitary nature of the chondriome of two species of trypanosomatids, Blastocrithidia culicis and Trypanosoma cruzi, has been demonstrated by utilizing serial thick-sectioning techniques combined with high voltage electron microscopy. Profiles of mitochondrial elements seen in thin sections and suspected to be parts of a continuum were confirmed by serial thick sectioning (0.25-0.50 mum thick) and stereopair analysis to be parts of the same mitochondrion. Three-dimensional models obtained from tracings of mitochondrial profiles on cellulose acetate reveal the mitochondrion of B. culicis to consist of a posterior mass with six tubular extensions extending upward and terminating in the anterior apex. The kinetoplast was found suspended between two of the tubular extensions, or less frequently, protuding as a nodule from one of the extensions. A bifurcation of one of the extensions was found in some specimens. The mitochondrion of T. cruzi consists of a triangular- shaped convoluted tubule, the base being the kinetoplast portion while the apex is directed posteriorly. The mitochondrion bifurcates behind the flagellar pocket, lateral to the kinetoplast, sending two entwined extensions into the tenuous anterior apex. Whether the mitochondrion of T. cruzi is unitary in the trypomastigote form was not determined in this study, since only epimastigote forms were used.
Innovativeness and Risk-taking Propensity : A Cross-Cultural Study of Finnish and U . S . Entrepreneurs and Small Business Owners

The present study centers on innovativeness and risk-taking. These two personality traits are among the most distinctive entrepreneurial characteristics. They provide a good starting point for a comparison of entrepreneurial behaviour between Finnish and U.S. entrepreneurs and small business owners. The Carland Entrepreneurship Index (CEI) was employed to measure the varying degrees of innovativeness and risk-taking displayed by Finnish and U.S. entrepreneurs and small business owners. The Americans (N=456) had greater risk-taking propensity than the Finns (N=434) who tended to be more conservative and risk-averse. Americans also exhibited slightly higher levels of innovation. Regarding gender, in the combined Finnish and U.S. sample, females had higher levels of innovation preference KIMMO HYRSKY, Research Fellow University of Jyväskylä, School of Business & Economics • e-mail: khyrsky@tase.jyu. fi MIKA TUUNANEN, Research Fellow University of Jyväskylä, School of Business & Economics • e-mail: mptuunan@tase.juy. fi LTA 3 / 9 9 • P . 2 3 8 – 2 5 6
PReFilter: An efficient privacy-preserving Relay Filtering scheme for delay tolerant networks

Without direct path, information delivery in sparse delay tolerant networks (DTNs) typically relies on intermittent relays, making the transmission not only unreliable but also time consuming. To make the matter even worse, the source nodes may transmit some encrypted “junk” information, similar as the spam emails in current mail systems, to the destinations; without effective control, the delivery of encrypted junk information would significantly consume the precious resource of DTN and accordingly throttle the network efficiency. To address this challenging issue, we propose PReFilter, an efficient privacy-preserving relay filter scheme to prevent the relay of encrypted junk information early in DTNs. In PReFilter, each node maintains a specific filtering policy based on its interests, and distributes this policy to a group of “friends” in the network in advance. By applying the filtering policy, the friends can filter the junk packets which are heading to the node during the relay. Note that the keywords in the filtering policy may disclose the node's interest/preference to some extent, harming the privacy of nodes, a privacy-preserving filtering policy distribution technique is introduced, which will keep the sensitive keywords secret in the filtering policy. Through detailed security analysis, we demonstrate that PReFilter can prevent strong privacy-curious adversaries from learning the filtering keywords, and discourage a weak privacy-curious friend to guess the filtering keywords from the filtering policy. In addition, with extensive simulations, we show that PReFilter is not only effective in the filtering of junk packets but also significantly improve the network performance with the dramatically reduced delivery cost due to the junk packets.
To What Extent are Canadians Exposed to Low Income?

In this paper, we investigate the extent to which Canadians were exposed to low income during the 1993-1996 period. Our main findings are the following. First, while 1 in 10 Canadians live in families with low income in a given year, as many as 1 in 5 are exposed to at least one year of low income during a 4-year interval. Second, 1 in 20 Canadians are exposed to low income for 4 consecutive years. Third, 40% to 60% of individuals who fall into low income in a given year will no longer have low income the following year. Fourth, some spells of low income last a long time: of all spells started in 1994, 30% lasted 3 years or more. Fifth, Canadians who are the most susceptible to low income tend to be young; to have little education; to be students and to live as unattached individuals or in lone-parent families. As well, Canadians facing disabilities that entail work limitations, those who are members of visible minorities (when considering the exposure to 4 years of low income) or who have immigrated in or after 1977 tend to experience low income. Sixth, high probabilities of being exposed to low income do not necessarily imply high income gaps, that is, the average income of those in low income may be quite close to the low income cut-off. As a result, a complete understanding of the extent to which Canadians are exposed to low income requires an analysis of both the probabilities of being exposed and the income gaps while being exposed.
AN EVALUATION OF REGRESSION ANALYSIS AND THE GRAVITY MODEL IN THE PHOENIX URBAN AREA

REGRESSION EQUATIONS FOR TRAFFIC GENERATION WERE DEVELOPED, AND GRAVITY MODELS DERIVED AND CALIBRATED ON DATA OBTAINED IN THE 1956-57 SURVEY CARRIED OUT IN THE PHOENIX URBAN AREA. INVENTORIES WERE MADE OF ECONOMIC DATA AND STREET NETWORK CHARACTERISTICS IN 1964. DATA FROM THESE INVENTORIES WERE USED AS INPUT TO THE MODELS TO FORECAST TRAVEL PATTERNS; THIS FORECAST WAS COMPARED WITH ACTUAL 1964 TRAVEL PATTERNS AS MEASURED BY SCREEN LINE GROUND COUNTS. THE SIMULATION PROJECT IS DESCRIBED, AND THIS METHOD OF FORECASTING FUTURE URBAN TRAVEL IS EVALUATED. /RRL/
Applying Aspect-Oriented Approach for Instance Adaptation for Object-Oriented Databases

Developing object-oriented database for web applications may not remain constant and may vary to a large extent due to a variety of reasons like correcting mistakes, adding new features or any changes in the structure of the real world artifacts modeled in the database. Class versioning is one of the evolution strategy employed that addressing the above issues. The existing strategy for instance adaptation introduces the adaptation code directly into the class versions upon evolution. Consequently, if the behavior of a routine needs to be changed and maintenance has to be performed on all the class versions it was introduced. A new approach for instance adaptation is achieved by encapsulating the instance adaptation code through aspects - abstractions introduced by aspect-oriented programming that localize cross-cutting concerns. A web-based student database system was developed with different versions and the versioning problem was solved using update/backdate aspects with selective lazy conversion. The update/backdate aspects are invoked whenever version incompatibility arises and selective lazy conversion aspect is invoked when the condition for converting objects into new version is satisfied and this converts only a subset of the old version objects into new version.
Variation in Number and Formation of Repeat Sequences in the rDNA ITS2 Region of Five Sibling Species in the Anopheles barbirostris Complex in Thailand

Abstract Repeat sequences of approximately 100 base pairs in length were found in the rDNA ITS2 region of Anopheles barbirostris van der Wulp (Diptera: Culicidae) species A1, A2, A3, A4, and An. campestris-like in the An. barbirostris complex. Variation in the number of repeats was observed among the five sibling species. Specifically, 10 repeats were observed in A1, eight in A2, A4, and campestris-like, and three in A3. Based on similarities in the sequences of the repeats, related repeats were classified into nine groups. Although A2, A4, and the campestris-like species had the same number of repeats, the ITS2 region of the three species contained different groups of repeats. Excluding the repeat sequences facilitated good alignment of the ITS2 region in the five sibling species. Phylogenetic analyses of the 95 isolines were compared with results obtained from mitochondrial genes (COI and COII). The results revealed marked differences among the five sibling species, particularly regarding the ITS2 region of A3, which was more distinct from the other four species than COI and COIL Repeat sequences in the ITS2 region of other Anopheles species retrieved from GenBank also were analyzed. New repeat sequences were found in An. beklemishevi Stegnii and Kabanova, An. crucians Wiedemann and An. funestus Giles, suggesting that the occurrence of repeat sequences in the ITS2 region are not rare in anopheline mosquitoes.
Density-based clustering using fuzzy proximity relations

Discovering clusters of varyingly shapes, sizes and densities in a data set is still a challenging problem for density-based algorithms. Recently presented approaches either require the input parameters involving the information about the structure of the data set, or are restricted to two-dimensional data. In this paper, we present a density-based clustering algorithm, which uses the fuzzy proximity relations between data objects for discovering differently dense clusters without any a-priori knowledge of a data set. In experiments, we show that our approach also correctly detects clusters closely located to each other and clusters with wide density variations.
Investigating the Double-Peak Phenomenon in Oral Pharmacokinetics of Eurycoma longifolia quassinoids in Lipid-Based Solid Dispersion

α(21)-Epoxyeurycomanone (EP) and eurycomanone (EN), the polar quassinoids of Eurycoma longifolia extract (TAF2) formulated as a lipid-based solid dispersion (TAF2-SD) to increase sperm count for oligospermic infertility, displayed improvement of oral pharmacokinetics and bioavailability in rats over the non-formulated TAF2 extract. The plasma concentration-time curves of the quassinoids in both preparations displayed double-peak phenomenon, similarly observed in BCS Class 3 drugs that are highly hydrophilic and of low phospholipid membrane permeability, which therefore prompted investigation of the contributing factors. The results following the oral co-administration of TAF2-SD with the gastrointestinal transit markers indicated that less than 50% w/w of EP and EN were absorbed in the rat small intestine prior to 2.5 h, the gastric emptying time of 50% w/w theophylline marker absorption. More than 70% w/w of the quassinoids were absorbed in the colon after 8 h, the detection of 50% w/w sulfapyridine, the hydrolyzed metabolite of sulfasalazine marker. The non-formulated TAF2 extract at 0.028 ppm and its major quassinoid, EN at 0.005 ppm reduced acetylcholine-and histamine-induced contractions of the guinea pig ileum, suggesting that the muscle relaxant effect contributed to the delay in gastric-emptying and absorption in the intestine. In conclusion, the formulated quassinoids improved the oral bioavailability without changing the double-peak pharmacokinetic profile, and reduced gut motility causing delayed gastric emptying and intestinal absorption.
Pathogen and Circadian Controlled 1 (PCC1) Protein Is Anchored to the Plasma Membrane and Interacts with Subunit 5 of COP9 Signalosome in Arabidopsis

The Pathogen and Circadian Controlled 1 (PCC1) gene, previously identified and further characterized as involved in defense to pathogens and stress-induced flowering, codes for an 81-amino acid protein with a cysteine-rich C-terminal domain. This domain is essential for homodimerization and anchoring to the plasma membrane. Transgenic plants with the ß-glucuronidase (GUS) reporter gene under the control of 1.1 kb promoter sequence of PCC1 gene display a dual pattern of expression. At early post-germination, PCC1 is expressed only in the root vasculature and in the stomata guard cells of cotyledons. During the transition from vegetative to reproductive development, PCC1 is strongly expressed in the vascular tissue of petioles and basal part of the leaf, and it further spreads to the whole limb in fully expanded leaves. This developmental pattern of expression together with the late flowering phenotype of long-day grown RNA interference (iPCC1) plants with reduced PCC1 expression pointed to a regulatory role of PCC1 in the photoperiod-dependent flowering pathway. iPCC1 plants are defective in light perception and signaling but are not impaired in the function of the core CO-FT module of the photoperiod-dependent pathway. The regulatory effect exerted by PCC1 on the transition to flowering as well as on other reported phenotypes might be explained by a mechanism involving the interaction with the subunit 5 of the COP9 signalosome (CSN).
Adsorption of avidin on microfabricated surfaces for protein biochip applications.

The adsorption of the protein avidin from hen egg white on patterns of silicon dioxide and platinum surfaces on a microchip and the use of fluorescent microscopy to detect binding of biotin are described. A silicon dioxide microchip was formed using plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition while platinum was deposited using radiofrequency sputtering. After cleaning using a plasma arc, the chips were placed into solutions containing avidin or bovine serum albumin. The avidin was adsorbed onto the microchips from phosphate-buffered saline (PBS) or from PBS to which ammonium sulfate had been added. Avidin was also adsorbed onto bovine serum albumin (BSA)-coated surfaces of oxide and platinum. Fluorescence microscopy was used to confirm adsorption of labeled protein, or the binding of fluorescently labeled biotin onto previously adsorbed, unlabeled avidin. When labeled biotin in PBS was presented to avidin adsorbed onto a BSA-coated microchip, the fluorescence signal was significantly higher than for avidin adsorbed onto the biochip alone. The results show that a simple, low-cost adsorption process can deposit active protein onto a chip in an approach that has potential application in the development of protein biochips for the detection of biological species.