Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Protection against Mycobacterium tuberculosis Infection Offered by a New Multistage Subunit Vaccine Correlates with Increased Number of IFN-γ+IL-2+ CD4+ and IFN-γ+ CD8+ T Cells

Protein subunit vaccines present a compelling new area of research for control of tuberculosis (TB). Based on the interaction between Mycobacterium tuberculosis and its host, five stage-specific antigens of M. tuberculosis that participate in TB pathogenesis—Rv1813, Rv2660c, Ag85B, Rv2623, and HspX—were selected. These antigens were verified to be recognized by T cells from a total of 42 whole blood samples obtained from active TB patients, patients with latent TB infections (LTBIs), and healthy control donors. The multistage polyprotein A1D4 was developed using the selected five antigens as a potentially more effective novel subunit vaccine. The immunogenicity and protective efficacy of A1D4 emulsified in the adjuvant MTO [monophosphoryl lipid A (MPL), trehalose-6,6′-dibehenate (TDB), components of MF59] was compared with Bacillus Calmette-Guerin (BCG) in C57BL/6 mice. Our results demonstrated that A1D4/MTO could provide more significant protection against M. tuberculosis infection than the PBS control or MTO adjuvant alone judging from the A1D4-specific Th1-type immune response; however, its efficacy was inferior to BCG as demonstrated by the bacterial load in the lung and spleen, and by the pathological changes in the lung. Antigen-specific single IL-2-secreting cells and different combinations with IL-2-secreting CD4+ T cells were beneficial and correlated with BCG vaccine-induced protection against TB. Antigen-specific IFN-γ+IL-2+ CD4+ T cells were the only effective biomarker significantly induced by A1D4/MTO. Among all groups, A1D4/MTO immunization also conferred the highest number of antigen-specific single IFN-γ+ and IFN-γ+TNF-α+ CD4+ T cells, which might be related to the antigen load in vivo, and single IFN-γ+ CD8+ T cells by mimicking the immune patterns of LTBIs or curable TB patients. Our strategy seems promising for the development of a TB vaccine based on multistage antigens, and subunit antigen A1D4 suspended in MTO adjuvant warrants preclinical evaluation in animal models of latent infection and may boost BCG vaccination.
Analysis of Cloud Computing Delivery Architecture Models

Cloud computing is one of the emerging technologies that will lead to the next generation of Internet. It provides optimized and efficient computing through enhanced collaboration, agility, scalability, and availability. In this paper, the evolution of the Cloud is discussed, the cloud computing model is explained, a set of cloud computing infrastructure metrics is listed, the cloud service model architectures are described, exemplary implementations of cloud service models are analyzed, and intriguing facts about cloud computing status and future are shared.
ANALYSIS OF THE COSTS AND BENEFITS OF ALTERNATIVE SOLUTIONS FOR RESTORING BIODIVERSITY Final report to Defra December 2010 . Defra Competition Code : WC 0758 / CR 0444

2 Acknowledgements This project would not have been possible without the input provided by the case study representatives. Wildlife Trust). They have spent time in providing data, their expertise, and discussions about their sites, for which we have been very grateful. There are also numerous other people who have kindly helped with providing information for the case studies. For Ennerdale, these included Jenny Butler (Natural (Welsh Assembly Government) was also a great help in providing agri-environment scheme data for the Welsh sites and Ewan Mackie and Charene Winbow (Forestry Commission) in providing standard timber values. At Bournemouth University, several people have also assisted with the project. Special thanks go to Chris Moody and Mark Dover. Jennifer Morgen provided information on GI. We would also like to thank Jon Finch at CEH for his input to the flood mitigation assessment for the case studies. Finally, we would like to thank the project steering group for their guidance.
Chapter 6 Including auxiliary item information to handle missing questionnaire data in two longitudinal data examples

Previous studies show that missing values in multi-item questionnaires can best be handled at item score level. The aim of this study is to demonstrate two novel methods for dealing with incomplete item scores in outcome variables in longitudinal studies. The performance of these methods was previously examined in a simulation study. The two methods incorporate item information at the background when simultaneously the study outcomes are estimated. The investigated methods include the item scores or a summary of a parcel of available item scores as auxiliary variables, while using the total score of the multi-item questionnaire as the main focus of the analysis in a latent growth model. That way the items help estimating the incomplete information of the total scores. The methods are demonstrated in two empirical datasets. Including the item information results in more precise outcomes in terms of regression coefficient estimates and standard errors, compared to not including item information in the analysis. The inclusion of a parcel summary is an efficient method that does not over-complicate longitudinal growth estimates. Therefore it is recommended in situations where multi-item questionnaires are used as outcome measure in longitudinal clinical studies with incomplete scores due to missing item scores. Including auxiliary item information in two longitudinal data examples | 109
VIGO: instrumental interaction in multi-surface environments

This paper addresses interaction in multi-surface environments and questions whether the current application-centric approaches to user interfaces are adequate in this context, and presents an alternative approach based on instrumental interaction. The paper presents the VIGO (Views, Instruments, Governors and Objects) architecture and describes a prototype implementation. It then illustrates how to apply VIGO to support distributed interaction. Finally, it demonstrates how a classical Ubicomp interaction technique, Pick-and-Drop, can be easily implemented using VIGO.
ADORES: a diversity-oriented online recommender system

Browsing a content platform usually does not require a user identification. In this context, personalized approaches can not be used since no information related to the user is available. In that case, it is important to consider the variety of potential interests of users when providing recommendations. In this paper, we propose a scalable recommendation diversity-oriented model which considers solely the current visited document, the available collection and the past clickthrough documents to produce a list of diversified recommendations. A learning phase is integrated to improve recommendation relevance along time. Our proposals are validated through several experiments.
Novel N-glycosylation in eukaryotes: laminin contains the linkage unit beta-glucosylasparagine

The linkage unit to protein of N-linked carbohydrate in eukaryotic glycoproteins consists of N-acetylglucosamine, coupled to the amido nitrogen of asparagine. Additional N-glycosyl linkage units have been unequivocally proven to exist only in the cell surface glycoproteins of various bacteria. Based on immunological analyses, isolation and chemical characterization, we report that one of these units, namely glucose linked to asparagine, exists in the mammalian protein laminin, an extracellular basement membrane component. This finding and the occurrence of identical disaccharide structures in archaebacterial cell surface glycoproteins and mammalian basement membrane protein complexes points towards a conserved and distinct function of these extracellular structural elements. In addition, a method is described to uncover a masked epitope in fixed tissues by chemical O-deglycosylation. This has allowed to morphologically localize the antigen beta-Glc-Asn by immunofluorescence to the basement membranes of kidney glomeruli.
Privacy-aware power charging coordination in future smart grid

In this paper, we propose a privacy-preserving power charging coordination scheme. Each energy storage unit (ESU) should send a charging request to an aggregator. The request does not reveal any private information to the aggregator. The aggregator forwards the requests to a charging controller that can know enough data to run a charging coordination scheme, but it cannot link the data to particular ESUs. Temporal charging coordination scheme is then proposed based on a modified knapsack problem formulation. The goal is to maximize the amount of power delivered to the ESUs before the charging requests expire without exceeding the available maximum charging capacity. Our simulation results demonstrate that both the optimal charging coordination and the privacy-aware charging coordination exhibit an improved performance compared with a first-come-first-serve charging coordination. More importantly, the privacy-aware scheme offers an attractive trade-off between the charging coordination performance and privacy preservation.
Off-line flyback LED driver with PWM dimming and power factor correction employing a single switch

In this work, an off-line flyback converter with PWM dimming function employing a single active power switch is proposed for LED lighting. The proposed converter is a slightly modified flyback topology which enables the main switch to be used both for power factor correction and PWM high-frequency dimming with a constant peak current on the LEDs, in order to conserve chromatic characteristics of the light emitted. The proposed control scheme uses duty-cycle to control the dimming level, while switching frequency is varied along to adjust the input power level and maintain a constant peak current on the LEDs. Mathematical description, simulation and experimental results of a prototype with 100 W of peak power fed from 127 V mains voltage are presented in this paper to show feasibility of the single-stage converter proposal.
Transforming the mathematical practices of learners and teachers through digital technology*

ABSTRACT This article argues that mathematical knowledge, and its related pedagogy, is inextricably linked to the tools in which the knowledge is expressed. The focus is on digital tools and the different roles they play in shaping mathematical meanings and in transforming the mathematical practices of learners and teachers. Six categories of digital tool-use that distinguish their differing potential are presented: (1) dynamic and graphical tools; (2) tools that outsource processing power; (3) tools that offer new representational infrastructures for mathematics; (4) tools that help to bridge the gap between school mathematics and the students’ world; (5) tools that exploit high-bandwidth connectivity to support mathematics learning; and (6) tools that offer intelligent support for the teacher when their students engage in exploratory learning with digital technologies. Following exemplification of each category, the article ends with some reflections on the progress of research in this area and identifies some remaining challenges.
SwitchReduce: Reducing switch state and controller involvement in OpenFlow networks

OpenFlow is a popular network architecture where a logically centralized controller (the control plane) is physically decoupled from all forwarding switches (the data plane). Through this controller, the OpenFlow framework enables flow level granularity in switches thereby providing monitoring and control over each individual flow. Among other things, this architecture comes at the cost of placing significant stress on switch state size and overburdening the controller in various traffic engineering scenarios such as dynamic re-routing of flows. Storing a flow match rule and flow counter at every switch along a flow's path results in many thousands of entries per switch. Dynamic rerouting of a flow, either in an attempt to utilize less congested paths, or as a consequence of virtual machine migration, results in controller intervention at every switch along the old and new paths. In the absence of careful orchestration of flow storage and controller involvement, OpenFlow will be unable to scale to anticipated production data center sizes. In this context, we present SwitchReduce - a system to reduce switch state and controller involvement in OpenFlow networks. SwitchReduce is founded on the observation that the number of flow match rules at any switch should be no more than the set of unique processing actions it has to take on incoming flows. Additionally, the flow counters for every unique flow may be maintained at only one switch in the network. We have implemented SwitchReduce as a NOX controller application. Simulation results with real data center traffic traces reveal that SwitchReduce can reduce flow entries by up to approximately 49% on first hop switches, and up to 99.9% on interior switches, while reducing flow counters by 75% on average.
Soil physical property changes at the North American long-term soil productivity study sites: 1 and 5 years after compaction

The impact of forest management operations on soil physical properties is important to understand, since management can significantly change site productivity by altering root growth potential, water infiltration and soil ero- sion, and water and nutrient availability. We studied soil bulk density and strength changes as indicators of soil com- paction before harvesting and 1 and 5 years after harvest and site treatment on 12 of the North American Long-Term Soil Productivity sites. Severe soil compaction treatments approached root-limiting bulk densities for each soil texture, while moderate compaction levels were between severe and preharvest values. Immediately after harvesting, soil bulk density on the severely compacted plots ranged from 1% less than to 58% higher than preharvest levels across all sites. Soil compaction increases were noticeable to a depth of 30 cm. After 5 years, bulk density recovery on coarse-textured soils was evident in the surface (0-10 cm) soil, but recovery was less in the subsoil (10-30 cm depth); fine-textured soils exhibited little recovery. When measured as a percentage, initial bulk density increases were greater on fine- textured soils than on coarser-textured soils and were mainly due to higher initial bulk density values in coarse-textured soils. Development of soil monitoring methods applicable to all soil types may not be appropriate, and more site- specific techniques may be needed for soil monitoring after disturbance.
Optimal Antenna Allocation in MIMO Radars with Collocated Antennas

The work presented here is concerned with the sensor management problem in collocated multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) radars. After deriving the Cramer-Rao lower bound (CRLB) as a performance measure, the antenna allocation problem is formulated as a standard semi-definite programming (SDP) for the single-target case. In addition, for multiple unresolved target scenarios, a sampling-based algorithm is proposed to deal with the nonconvexity of the cost function. Simulations confirm the superiority of the localization results under the optimal structure.
A Wavelet-Based Technique Towards a More Natural Sounding Synthesized Speech

This paper presents a wavelet-based technique to increase the quality and naturalness of LPC based synthesized speech signals. The proposed method is based on wavelet decomposition. We first obtain the wavelet coefficients, and then the variances of the wavelet coefficient at the last four scales (correspond the higher frequency region) of the synthetic speech are replaced by the original variances of the original speech. We apply the technique to synthetic speech. The results suggest that the wavelet-based technique increases the naturalness of the synthesized speech.
Dialog Act Modeling for Conversational Speech

We describe an integrated approach for statistical modeling of di&cotu&e &tructure for natural conversa t,ional speech. Our model is based on ·12 'dialog acts' ( e.g., Statement, Question, lla.ckchannel, Agreement, Disagrccrne11 L, ;\ pology ), wl1 ich were l1 a11d-lahclecl i 11 11. 'i.5 c:onvcrsa.Lio11s rrom I.he Swil.chboarcl corpus or spontaneous human-to-human telephone speech. \Ve developed several modeb and algorithms to automati cally detect dialog acts from transcribed or automati cally recognized words and from prosodic propert.ies of Lhc spc(,c:h sig11al a.ncl hy using ,L sl,at.is1.ic:a,l discourse grammar. :\11 or l.11c~c c:0111por1c11t~ wen, prohahilisl,ic in nature and estimated from data, employing a vari ety of technique& (hidden }farkov models, N-gram lan guage models, maximum entropy estimation, decision t.ree classifiers, and neural networks). ln preliminary sL11clics, we ad1icvccl a dialog ;u:L la.bcli11g a.c:c:11racy or 6;';% hasecl 011 recog11iy.ecJ word~ a11cl prosody, a11cl a.11 accuracy of 72% based on word transcripts. Since hu mans achieve 84% on this task (with chance perfor mance at, 3,3%,) we find these results encouraging
Stacks on the surface: resolving physical order using fiducial markers with structured transparency

We present a method for identifying the order of stacked items on interactive surfaces. This is achieved using conventional, passive fiducial markers, which in addition to reflective regions, also incorporate structured areas of transparency. This allows particular orderings to appear as unique marker patterns. We discuss how such markers are encoded and fabricated, and include relevant mathematics. To motivate our approach, we comment on various scenarios where stacking could be especially useful. We conclude with details from our proof-of-concept implementation, built on Microsoft Surface.
Effect of tumor necrosis factor alpha and infliximab on apoptosis of B lymphocytes infected or not with Epstein e Barr virus

Chronic inflammation and immunosuppressive therapies increase the risk of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma associated or not with EpsteineBarr virus (EBV) infection. A possible link between infliximab treatment and increased risk of lymphoma has been suggested. Indeed, infliximab induces apoptosis of monocytes and activated T lymphocytes, but its effect on B lymphocytes infected or not with EBV is unknown. Secreted tumor necrosis factor (TNF) a and the expression level of TNF receptor 1 (TNFR1) and TNFR2 were compared in EBV-positive and negative Bcell lines. The impact of TNFa and infliximab on apoptosis of EBV-positive cells was analyzed regarding the activity of NF-kB. Increased expression of TNFa in EBV-positive cells suggested that infliximab could affect their survival. However, TNFa or infliximab incubation had no effect on apoptosis of EBV-positive cells. Loss of NF-kB activity sensitized lymphoblastoid cell lines to TNFa-induced apoptosis, but no direct effect of infliximab on apoptosis was detected. On the basis of our in vitro data, neither TNFa nor infliximab has a direct effect on apoptosis of B lymphocytes and EBV-positive cell lines. Thus, if an increased incidence of lymphoma were induced by TNFa blockers, it would not involve a direct effect on B cells but rather an impaired immune surveillance by T cells. 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Hepatosplanchnic haemodynamics and renal blood flow and function in rats with liver failure

Background—Massive liver necrosis, characteristic of acute liver failure, may affect hepatosplanchnic haemodynamics, and contribute to the alterations in renal haemodynamics and function. Aims—To investigate the relation between hepatosplanchnic haemodynamics, including portal systemic shunting, and renal blood flow and function in rats with acute liver failure. Methods—Liver failure was induced in male Wistar rats by intraperitoneal injection of 1.1 g/kg ofd(+)-galactosamine hydrochloride. The parameters assessed included: systemic, hepatosplanchnic, and renal blood flow (57Co microsphere method); portal-systemic shunting and intrarenal shunting (consecutive intrasplenic, intraportal, or renal arterial injections of 99mTc methylene diphosphonate and99mTc albumin microspheres); arterial blood pressure and portal pressure; renal function; and liver function (liver function tests and 14C aminopyrine breath test). Results—Progressive liver dysfuntion was accompanied by the development of a hyperdynamic circulation, a highly significant decrease in renal blood flow and function, and an increase in intrarenal shunting 36, 42, and 48 hours after administration of d-galactosamine. The alterations in renal blood flow and function were accompanied by significant increases in portal pressure, portal venous inflow, and intrahepatic portal systemic shunting in galactosamine treated rats compared with controls. There was a significant correlation between changes in renal blood flow and changes in portal pressure, intrahepatic portal systemic shunting, and deterioration in liver function (r=0.8, p<0.0001). Conclusions—The results of this study suggest that both increased intrahepatic portal systemic shunting and hepatocyte impairment may contribute to alterations in renal haemodynamics and function.
Genome-Wide Association Study of Pancreatic Cancer in Japanese Population

Pancreatic cancer shows very poor prognosis and is the fifth leading cause of cancer death in Japan. Previous studies indicated some genetic factors contributing to the development and progression of pancreatic cancer; however, there are limited reports for common genetic variants to be associated with this disease, especially in the Asian population. We have conducted a genome-wide association study (GWAS) using 991 invasive pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma cases and 5,209 controls, and identified three loci showing significant association (P-value<5×10−7) with susceptibility to pancreatic cancer. The SNPs that showed significant association carried estimated odds ratios of 1.29, 1.32, and 3.73 with 95% confidence intervals of 1.17–1.43, 1.19–1.47, and 2.24–6.21; P-value of 3.30×10−7, 3.30×10−7, and 4.41×10−7; located on chromosomes 6p25.3, 12p11.21 and 7q36.2, respectively. These associated SNPs are located within linkage disequilibrium blocks containing genes that have been implicated some roles in the oncogenesis of pancreatic cancer.
Multiresolution Approach for Color Image Segmentation using MRF Model

In this paper, the color image segmentation problem is addressed in supervised framework. In the supervised framework, we assume to have one original image from the class of images from which the given image is derived. In this framework, We have used Markov Random Field(MRF) to model the image label process and the MRF model parameters are estimated using the conditional pseudolikelihood criterion. Ohta( I1, I2, I3 )model is used as the color model. The segmentation problem is formulated as the pixel labeling problem. The image model parameter estimation problem is formulated using pseudo-likelihood criterion. The image label estimation problem is cast in Maximum {a Posteriori} (MAP) framework. These MAP estimates are obtained using the proposed new hybrid algorithm and compared with Simulated Annealing (SA) algorithm. It is observed that the proposed hybrid algorithm converge much faster than that of SA. The segmentation scheme is further improved by adhering to multiresolution approach where the segmentation is carried at a coarse level and reconstructed to a finer level. The proposed scheme appears to be more viable from a practical standpoint.