Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
In silico identified CCR4 antagonists target regulatory T cells and exert adjuvant activity in vaccination

Adjuvants are substances that enhance immune responses and thus improve the efficacy of vaccination. Few adjuvants are available for use in humans, and the one that is most commonly used (alum) often induces suboptimal immunity for protection against many pathogens. There is thus an obvious need to develop new and improved adjuvants. We have therefore taken an approach to adjuvant discovery that uses in silico modeling and structure-based drug-design. As proof-of-principle we chose to target the interaction of the chemokines CCL22 and CCL17 with their receptor CCR4. CCR4 was posited as an adjuvant target based on its expression on CD4+CD25+ regulatory T cells (Tregs), which negatively regulate immune responses induced by dendritic cells (DC), whereas CCL17 and CCL22 are chemotactic agents produced by DC, which are crucial in promoting contact between DC and CCR4+ T cells. Molecules identified by virtual screening and molecular docking as CCR4 antagonists were able to block CCL22- and CCL17-mediated recruitment of human Tregs and Th2 cells. Furthermore, CCR4 antagonists enhanced DC-mediated human CD4+ T cell proliferation in an in vitro immune response model and amplified cellular and humoral immune responses in vivo in experimental models when injected in combination with either Modified Vaccinia Ankara expressing Ag85A from Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MVA85A) or recombinant hepatitis B virus surface antigen (rHBsAg) vaccines. The significant adjuvant activity observed provides good evidence supporting our hypothesis that CCR4 is a viable target for rational adjuvant design.
Empirical method in the study of esotericism1

The debate initiated by Segal's "defense of reductionism" has produced a polarization between the theoretical positions of reductionism and religionism, suggesting that no alternative exists. This is unfortunate, for empirical research is neither reductionist nor religionist. The article discusses this neglected empirical option. Empirical research must be based on methodological agnosticism with regard to religious and philosophical "first principles", and must fully recognize the historicity of religious phenomena. This empirical perspective is applied to the newly emerging academic field of esotericism. Antoine Faivre's definition of esotericism as a historically recognizable "form of thought" leads to a discussion of the empirical status of the history of (religious) ideas, especially in the tradition of Arthur O. Lovejoy. This is followed by a discussion of the implications of empirical method for the diachronic and the synchronic study of esotericism. It is argued that the latter pursuit entails a fundamental questioning of conventional distinctions, particularly between "gnosticism" and "mysticism".
EHE: nonce misuse-resistant message authentication

We propose a nonce misuse-resistant message authentication scheme called EHE (Encrypt-Hash-Encrypt). In EHE, a message-dependent polynomial is evaluated at the point which is an encrypted nonce. The resulting polynomial hash value is encrypted again and becomes an authentication tag. We prove the prf-security of the EHE scheme and extend it to two authenticated encryption modes which follow the “encrypt-then-authenticate” paradigm
Influence of life history and seasonal hydrology on lipid storage in three neotropical fish species

The seasonal dynamics of energy (lipid) storage in three neotropical fish species with differing life histories were evaluated. Lipid content was substantially greater in the liver than in dorsal musculature of all three species. Two piscivores (Cichla temensis and Serrasalmus manueli) showed large, statistically significant seasonal fluctuations in liver lipid content. Liver lipid content increased during high water, through the falling water, and into the early dry season for both piscivores. Seasonal variation in dorsal muscle lipid content was large and statistically significant for C. temensis, but was small and non-significant for S. manueli. Cichla temensis appeared to ‘finance’ costs associated with reproduction by accumulating lipids during the falling-water period when migratory prey allowed the species to subsidize their energetic dynamics. Semaprochilodus kneri ,a migratory algivore and detritivore, showed no significant seasonal variation in dorsal muscle lipid content and minimally significant seasonal variation in liver lipid content. Statistically significant effects of lipid content on d 13 C was observed when tissue lipid content varied by >12%, while biological interpretation of food web statistics based on d 13 C values appears robust to minor variations in lipid content. Nonetheless, when lipid content varied by larger amounts (e.g. >35% for C. temensis and S. manueli liver tissue) lipids appeared to have a large potential effect ond 13 Ca nd food web statistics calculated from such measurements may have been biased. Surprisingly, even large variation in tissue lipid content did not affect d 15 N. # 2006 The Fisheries Society of the British Isles
An Effective and Practical Classifier Fusion Strategy for Improving Handwritten Character Recognition

In this paper, we propose a classifier fusion strategy which trains MQDF (modified quadratic discriminant functions) classifiers using cascade structure and combines classifiers on the measurement level to improve handwritten character recognition performance. The generalized confidence is introduced to compute recognition score, and the maximum rule based fusion is applied. The proposed fusion strategy is practical and effective. Its performance is evaluated by handwritten Chinese character recognition experiments on different databases. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm achieves at least 10% reduction on classification error, and even higher 24% classification error reduction on bad quality samples.
Inhibition and eradication of human glioma with tumor-targeting Salmonella typhimurium in an orthotopic nude-mouse model

Malignant glioma tumors are the most common primary central nervous system tumors. Despite the multidisciplinary approach to treatment, prognosis remains poor. In this study, we demonstrated that the Salmonella typhimurium A1-R tumor-targeting strain can inhibit and eradicate human glioma in an orthotopic nude-mouse model. S. typhimurium A1-R was administered by injection through a craniotomy open-window or intravenously in nude mice. To establish the model, 2 x 105 U87-RFP human glioma cells were injected stereotactically into the mouse brain through the craniotomy open window. Two weeks after glioma-cell implantation, mice were treated with S. typhimurium A1-R [2 x 107 CFU/200 μl intravenous injection (i.v.) or 1 x 106 CFU/1 μl intracranial injection (i.c.)] once a week for 3 weeks. Brain tumors were observed by fluorescence imaging through the craniotomy open window over time. S. typhimurium A1-R, administered i.c. , inhibited brain tumor growth 7.6-fold compared with untreated mice (p = 0.009) and improved survival 73% (p = 0.001). Two of ten mice appeared to have their tumors eradicated. Intravenous administration of S. typhimurium A1-R was not effective. The craniotomy open window enabled observation of tumor growth in the brain in real time in both treated and untreated mice. The results of the present study demonstrate that bacterial therapy of brain cancer is a novel, effective and safe treatment strategy in a highly treatment-resistance cancer.
Drift compensation architectures and techniques for reduced-resolution transcoding

This paper discusses the problem of reduced-resolution transcoding of compressed video bitstreams. An analysis of drift errors is provided to identify the sources of quality degradation when transcoding to a lower spatial resolution. Two types of drift error are considered: a reference picture error, which has been identified in previous works, and error due to the non-commutative property of motion compensation and down-sampling, which is unique to this work. To overcome these sources of error, four novel architectures are presented. One architecture attempts to compensate for the reference picture error in the reduced resolution, while another architecture attempts to do the same in the original resolution. We present a third architecture that attempts to eliminate the second type of drift error and a final architecture that relies on an intra block refresh method to compensate all types of errors. In all these architectures, a variety of macroblock level conversions are required, such as motion vector mapping and texture down-sampling. These conversions are discussed in detail. Another important issue for the transcoder is rate control. This is especially important for the intra refresh architecture since it must find a balance between number of intra blocks used to compensate errors and the associated rate-distortion characteristics of the low-resolution signal. The complexity and quality of the architectures are compared. Based on the results, we find that the intra refresh architecture offers the best trade-off between quality and complexity, and is also the most flexible.
Benefits of Self-Control in Dyad Practice

Avariable recently demonstrated to be effective in enhancing the motor skills learning is the leamer's selfcontrol. That is,giving learners some control over the practice situation can be more beneficial for learning than prescriptive practice regimes. For example, Titzer, Shea, and Romack (1993) found that a self-controlled practice schedule was more effective for learning different versions ofa barrier knock-down task than both random and blocked schedules. More recently,janelle and colleagues (Janelle, Barba, Frehlich, Tennant, & Cauraugh, 1997;janelle, Kim, & Singer, 1995) showed that learners who could decide when they wanted to receive feedback demonstrated better learning ofa throwing task than (yoked) learners who had no control over the provision of feedback. Finally, Wulfand Toole (1999) found learning advantages for the self-controlled use ofphysical aids on learning a ski-simulator task. Participants who were given the option to use physical assistance devices (ski poles) on each trial showed larger movement amplitudes in retention than their yoked counterparts. As possible reasons for its effectiveness it has been suggested that self-control promotes the leamer's more active involvement in the learning process, which seems to lead to a deeper processing ofrelevant information (MeCombs, 1989;Watkins, 1984; see also Chen & Singer, 1992). Also, perceived control is assumed to influence how effectively the performer takes charge of the learning process
Rapamycin in fibrotic diseases: beneficial or detrimental agent?

The discovery of rapamycin led to the identification and clone of the mammalian target of rapaymycin (mTOR). mTOR is a highly conserved serine-threonine kinase shown to integrate and coordinate diverse signaling pathway mediated by growth factors, nutrient availability and energy status to play a critical role in cell growth, proliferation, division, migration, and survival. Structurally, mTOR is a part of two signaling complexes, mTOR complex 1 (mTORC1) and mTORC2. Rapamycin is a potent, highly specific inhibitor of mTORC1 and does not attenuate any kinase other than mTOR. After diffusing into cells, rapamycin forms a complex with FK506-binding protein 12 (FKBP-12) and then binds and inhibits mTOR phosphorylation and inactivates ribosomal S6 kinase 1 (S6K1) and the eukaryotic initiation factor 4E (eIF4E) inhibitory binding protein (4E-BP). Via inhibiting the mTOR signal axis, rapamycin modulates malignant cellular growth, progression of fibrotic disorders. The current review will give a brief overview on the rapamycin/mTOR network relevant to fibrotic diseases and will mainly focus on recent scientific debates on rapamycin’s regulatory role in fibrosis models both in vitro and in vivo (Table 1).
RATING PREDICTION BASED ON SENTIMENTAL ANALYSIS OF REVIEWS FROM ONLINE TRENDING FORUMS

Research on recommendation system is now getting a lot of attention due to the rapid growth of user generated contents, especially internet review forums. Users easily share about their experiences towards some products and services on the review forums. As a result, review forums are overwhelmed with the amount of valuable information for predicting user interests. In our work, we present a method to develop a recommendation system leveraging the information mined from review forums. Our method automatically determines user interests by learning from user reviews. Furthermore, we propose the notion of "considered aspects" as the form of user interests, which serve as key information why users are interested in consuming a specific product or service. Several state-of-the-art methods, such as Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA), are employed to extract those "considered aspects".
Technical note: an improved method to quantify nonesterified fatty acids in bovine plasma.

Nonesterified fatty acids (NEFA) are measured routinely in the study of nutrition and growth physiology. To improve the efficiency with which this variable is measured, a two-reaction, enzymatic-based assay was adapted and validated to quantify NEFA in bovine blood plasma using 96-well microtiter plates. The effects of incubation time, temperature, and of sample volume were examined in addition to possible interfering substances, recovery, reagent stability, and range of linearity. Incubation for 30 min at 21 degrees C for each of the two reactions resulted in maximal slope and r2 values (1.94 and .999, respectively). Percentage of recovery was 107% when using 5 microL and 100% when using 10 microL of heparinized bovine plasma in the assay. Uniform linear standard curves (r2 > .99) were obtained using reagents stored at 4 degrees C for 9 d. An equal volume of 1 mM acetate, propionate, valerate, and butyrate added to plasma did not affect results. The assay was linear from 125 to > 1,000 microEq/L. Intra- and interassay CV for the 5-microL sample volume were 3.6 and 3.7%, respectively. This modified assay provides results comparable to the standard assay yet reduces reagent and labor requirements and increases sample capacity.
Performance analysis of DS-CDMA system using fast adaptive filtering under different jamming techniques

This paper proposes an enhancement to the performance of a Direct Sequence Code Division Multiple Access (DS-CDMA) system by utilizing an adaptive filter in the presence of different jamming techniques. In order to combat the impact of such jamming, the adaptive filter utilizes three adaptive algorithms which are the Variable Step-Size Affine Projection (VSS-APA) algorithm, the Generalized Normalized Gradient Descent (GNGD) algorithm, and the Generalized Square-Error-Regularized (GSER) NLMS algorithm. These algorithms have the advantages of fast convergence, low steady state mean squared error and the ability to improve the bit error rate (BER) performance of the conventional CDMA system, in the presence of multi-path, multiple-access, and different jamming signals. Results show that the VSS-APA outperforms other algorithms in the presence of barrage jamming. Whereas in the presence of partial band jamming the GSER-NLMS adaptive filter gives the best performance.
Estimating Multi-Level Discrete-Time Hazard Models Using Cross-Sectional Data: Neighborhood Effects on the Onset of Adolescent Cigarette Use

Investigating the effects of social context (e.g., neighborhood or school context) on the timing of behaviors (such as cigarette use initiation) requires both multi-level modeling and eventhistory analysis, and often requires the construction of a retrospective person-period data set from cross-sectional data. In this article we describe procedures for constructing such a data set and discuss modeling strategies for estimating multi-level discrete-time event history models. We show that the estimation of two-level discrete-time models involves three distinct modeling assumptions (the assumptions that individual- and neighborhood-level covariates have the same effect at all time points and the assumption that the baseline logithazard curves in each neighborhood are parallel) and discuss methods of relaxing and empirically testing each of these assumptions. Estimation can be simplified in some cases if we additionally assume that the shape of the baseline logit-hazard curve in each neighborhood can be approximated by a simple functional form. The methods described here are applicable to a wide variety of questions where the dependent variable of interest is either onset or cessation. Here we apply these methods to the analysis of cigarette use initiation in a sample of 1,979 11- to 18-year-olds drawn from 79 neighborhoods of Chicago. We find that the racial composition of a neighborhood accounts for roughly half of the difference in age of smoking initiation between Black and White teenagers. Specifically, we find that living in a neighborhood with a large percentage of Black residents is associated with a lower hazard of adolescent cigarette use initiation than is living in neighborhoods with few Black residents.
Expression and Characterization of Murine Hevin (SC1), a Member of the SPARC Family of Matricellular Proteins

Hevin, also known as SC1, MAST 9, SPARC-like 1, RAGS1 and ECM2, is a member of the SPARC-related family of matricellular proteins. Mouse hevin is 53% identical to mouse SPARC, and both proteins share a follistatin-like module and an extracellular Ca2+-binding (E-C) domain. SPARC functions as a modulator of cell-matrix interactions, a regulator of growth factor activity, a de-adhesive protein, and a cell cycle inhibitor. Although the functions of mouse hevin are unknown, its human orthologue has been shown to be de-adhesive for endothelial cells. We now report the production of recombinant mouse hevin in insect cells through the use of a baculoviral expression system and its purification by anion-exchange, size-exclusion chromatography, and isoelectric focusing. Furthermore, we have produced rat anti-hevin monoclonal antibodies (MAbs) that have been characterized by indirect and capture ELISAs, immunoblotting, immunoprecipitation, and immunohistochemistry (IHC). Recombinant hevin, present as a soluble factor or bound to tissue-culture plastic, inhibited the spreading of bovine aortic endothelial cells in vitro. IHC analysis of hevin in normal human and mouse tissues revealed a limited expression pattern in many tissues, with particularly dominant staining in dermis, ducts, vasculature, muscle, and brain. In lung and pancreatic tumor xenografts, we found distinct reactivity with MAbs that were selective for stromal cells, tumor cells, and/or endothelial cells. Although similar to SPARC in its anti-adhesive activities, hevin nevertheless exhibits a distinctive histological distribution that, in certain invasive tumors, is associated with desmoplasia.
Supporting a healthy lifestyle by re-using personal online data

Using technology to support users in healthy living undoubtedly has a high potential. With the availability of low-cost consumer medical devices, these technologies now more and more become part of a digital lifestyle. We present a system which integrates multiple such sensors into a joint system to enable a unified view on a user's health. The acquired data will be deployed in two applications: a persuasive system to help the user maintain a healthy lifestyle, and a personal health record for long-term storage and future medical use.
Isolation of a Candida albicans gene, tightly linked to URA3, coding for a putative transcription factor that suppresses a Saccharomyces cerevisiae aft1 mutation

A pathogen such as C. albicans needs an efficient mechanism of iron uptake in an iron‐restricted environment such as is the human body. A ferric‐reductase activity regulated by iron and copper, and analogous to that in S. cerevisiae, has been described in C. albicans. We have developed an in‐plate protocol for the isolation of clones that complement an aft1 mutation in S. cerevisiae that makes cells dependent on iron for growth. After transformation of S. cerevisiae aft1 with a C. albicans library, we have selected clones that grow in conditions of iron deficiency and share an identical plasmid, pIRO1, with a 4500 bp insert containing the URA3 gene and an ORF (IRO1) responsible for the suppression of the iron dependency. IRO1 does not show homology with AFT1 or with other sequences in the databases. Northern analysis demonstrates constitutive expression of IRO1. CAI4, a C. albicans strain isolated as Δura3, also has a deletion of the 3′ half of IRO1, and displays in YNB medium similar phenotypic characteristics to S. cerevisiae aft1 mutant strains. Therefore, we consider IRO1 as a gene of C. albicans involved in the utilization of iron. However, in extreme conditions of iron deprivation, CAI4 seems to activate alternative mechanisms of iron uptake that allow a better growth than the wild strain SC5314. Analysis of its predicted protein sequence is in agreement with a role of Iro1p as a transcription factor. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Downregulation of platelet activation markers during long-term immobilization

Immobilization and sedentary lifestyle are risk factors for venous thromboembolism and cardiovascular disease, yet little is known about platelet function during long-term physical inactivity. Our aim was to investigate platelet activation markers and their coupling to standardized immobilization: platelet-derived growth factor (PDGF-BB) and P-selectin. We studied 15 healthy females participating in the Women International Space simulation for Exploration study. Following a 20-day ambulatory control period, the subjects underwent 60 days of bed rest in head-down tilt position (−6°) 24 hours a day, finalized by 20 days of recovery. The subjects were randomized into two groups during bed rest: a control group (n = 8) that remained physically inactive and an exercise group (n = 7) that participated in both supine resistance and aerobic exercise training. Blood samples for the analysis of platelet activation markers were collected at baseline (5 days before bed rest), after 44 days of bed rest and 8 days into the recovery period. Compared to baseline, the levels of P-selectin and PDGF-BB decreased after bed rest (by 55%, p = 0.01 and 73%, p < 0.03, respectively) and remained decreased in the recovery period (by 76%, p < 0.001 and 78%, p < 0.02, respectively, compared to baseline). Platelet count (baseline value for the exercise group 260 000/µl ± 34 000 and baseline value for the control group 210 000/µl ± 30 000) did not change during the bed rest study (two-way repeated measurements ANOVA, p = ns). There were no statistical differences between the physically inactive and the exercise group. During long-term immobilization, a known risk factor for thrombosis, the levels of P-selectin and PDGF-BB decreased. Our findings indicate downregulation of platelet activation during immobilization.
A Grid Connected Three-Port Solar Micro Inverter

In the present scenario of increasing energy crisis Interest in ac module strategy for PV based microinverter has grown in recent years because of its improved energy harvest, improved system efficiency, lower installation costs, plug-N-play operation, and enhanced flexibility and modularity . Microinverters avoid the drastic reduction in power produced by PV panels due to shading effect. In this paper a three-port microinverter topology is being studied which is connected to single phase grid. The proposed topology is basically a flyback converter with an extra switch and diode. This arrangement allows the use of a low capacitance film capacitor, with long lifespan, as decoupling capacitor instead of E-caps, with short lifespan. Thus proposed three-port microinverter has longer lifespan.The operation principles and design considerations are explained in this paper. The MATLAB/SIMULINK based simulation of the microinverter is also performed.