Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Protection of Macaques against Pathogenic Simian/Human Immunodeficiency Virus 89.6PD by Passive Transfer of Neutralizing Antibodies

ABSTRACT The role of antibody in protection against human immunodeficiency virus (HIV-1) has been difficult to study in animal models because most primary HIV-1 strains do not infect nonhuman primates. Using a chimeric simian/human immunodeficiency virus (SHIV) based on the envelope of a primary isolate (HIV-89.6), we performed passive-transfer experiments in rhesus macaques to study the role of anti-envelope antibodies in protection. Based on prior in vitro data showing neutralization synergy by antibody combinations, we evaluated HIV immune globulin (HIVIG), and human monoclonal antibodies (MAbs) 2F5 and 2G12 given alone, compared with the double combination 2F5/2G12 and the triple combination HIVIG/2F5/2G12. Antibodies were administered 24 h prior to intravenous challenge with the pathogenic SHIV-89.6PD. Six control monkeys displayed high plasma viremia, rapid CD4+-cell decline, and clinical AIDS within 14 weeks. Of six animals given HIVIG/2F5/2G12, three were completely protected; the remaining three animals became SHIV infected but displayed reduced plasma viremia and near normal CD4+-cell counts. One of three monkeys given 2F5/2G12 exhibited only transient evidence of infection; the other two had marked reductions in viral load. All monkeys that received HIVIG, 2F5, or 2G12 alone became infected and developed high-level plasma viremia. However, compared to controls, monkeys that received HIVIG or MAb 2G12 displayed a less profound drop in CD4+ T cells and a more benign clinical course. These data indicate a general correlation between in vitro neutralization and protection and suggest that a vaccine that elicits neutralizing antibody should have a protective effect against HIV-1 infection or disease.
Heterogeneous information exposure and technology adoption: the case of tissue culture bananas in Kenya

Classical innovation adoption models implicitly assume homogenous information flow across farmers, which is often not realistic. As a result, selection bias in adoption parameters may occur. We focus on tissue culture (TC) banana technology that was introduced in Kenya more than 10 years ago. Up till now, adoption rates have remained relatively low. We employ the average treatment effects approach to account for selection bias and extend it by explicitly differentiating between awareness exposure (having heard of a technology) and knowledge exposure (understanding the attributes of a technology). Using a sample of Kenyan banana farmers, we find that estimated adoption parameters differ little when comparing the classical adoption model with one that corrects for heterogeneous awareness exposure. However, parameters differ considerably when accounting for heterogeneous knowledge exposure. This is plausible: while many farmers have heard about TC technology, its successful use requires notable changes in cultivation practices, and proper understanding is not yet very widespread. These results are also important for other technologies that are knowledge-intensive and require considerable adjustments in traditional practices.
Multi-region statistical shape model for cochlear implantation

Statistical shape models are commonly used to analyze the variability between similar anatomical structures and their use is established as a tool for analysis and segmentation of medical images. However, using a global model to capture the variability of complex structures is not enough to achieve the best results. The complexity of a proper global model increases even more when the amount of data available is limited to a small number of datasets. Typically, the anatomical variability between structures is associated to the variability of their physiological regions. In this paper, a complete pipeline is proposed for building a multi-region statistical shape model to study the entire variability from locally identified physiological regions of the inner ear. The proposed model, which is based on an extension of the Point Distribution Model (PDM), is built for a training set of 17 high-resolution images (24.5 μm voxels) of the inner ear. The model is evaluated according to its generalization ability and specificity. The results are compared with the ones of a global model built directly using the standard PDM approach. The evaluation results suggest that better accuracy can be achieved using a regional modeling of the inner ear.
Link Quality Information Sharing by Compressed Sensing and Compressed Transmission for Arbitrary Topology Wireless Mesh Networks

We proposed to apply compressed sensing to realize information sharing of link quality for wireless mesh networks (WMNs) with grid topology. In this paper, we extend the link quality sharing method to be applied for WMNs with arbitrary topology. For arbitrary topology WMNs, we introduce a link quality matrix and a matrix formula for compressed sensing. By employing a diffusion wavelets basis, the link quality matrix is converted to its sparse equivalent. Based on the sparse matrix, information sharing is achieved by compressed sensing. In addition, we propose compressed transmission for arbitrary topology WMNs, in which only the compressed link quality information is transmitted. Experiments and simulations clarify that the proposed methods can reduce the amount of data transmitted for information sharing and maintain the quality of the shared information. key words: wireless mesh network, link quality, information sharing, compressed sensing, diffusion wavelets
Testing rational expectations in primary commodity markets

The standard method used to test the rational expectations hypothesis (REH) in primary commodity markets is by means of a structural approach. In this paper, a parsimonious vector error correction model in the price and stock equation is derived that maintains almost complete information of the underlying structural model. The empirical section utilizes 1955–2000 US copper data to investigate the properties of the model extended to the macroeconomic variables. The estimation results are statistically robust and are in keeping with economic theory. Three different results are found: (i) price adjustments depend on the short-run dynamic of the stock equation, whereas the long-run dynamic is statistically rejected; (ii) the over-identification restrictions, including the test for the REH, are not rejected; (iii) the forecast simulations on price are well performed.
Misery Loves Company: Equilibrium Portfolios with Heterogeneous Consumption Externalities

The present article extends the Arrow-Debreu portfolio model to consumption externalities. It is assumed that each investor has a von Neumann-Morgenstern utility that is a function of her own consumption and of the average consumption in the group to which she belongs. Individual degrees of risk aversion and conformism are heterogeneous within each group and between the different groups in the economy. We show that, under some conditions on the degree of conformism in the economy, the optimal portfolio and consumption choices observed at equilibrium in each group with consumption externalities are equivalent to those that are optimal without any externality, but with an adjusted degree of risk aversion. If these conditions are not fulfilled, groups have no representative agent and the demand for pure zero-mean lotteries may be positive, thereby showing that not all diversifiable risks are washed away at equilibrium. We characterize the relationship between the distribution of conformism in the economy to the competitive allocation of risk and to the equity premium. We provide conditions for the two-fund separation property to hold. Copyright 2004 by the Economics Department Of The University Of Pennsylvania And Osaka University Institute Of Social And Economic Research Association.
miR-181a Expression in Donor T Cells Modulates Graft-versus-Host Disease after Allogeneic Bone Marrow Transplantation

Because miR-181a has been described to alter T cell activation, we hypothesized that manipulation of miR-181a expression in donor T cells may alter acute graft-versus-host disease (aGvHD) after allogeneic bone marrow transplantation (BMT). We therefore analyzed the impact of enhanced and reduced miR-181a expression in donor T cells on aGvHD induction by lentiviral gene transfer into primary T cells and using miR-181a/b-1−/− T cells, respectively. BMT-recipient mice receiving donor T cells with enhanced miR-181a expression showed no signs of aGvHD and survived for the time of follow-up, whereas T cells lacking miR-181a/b-1 accelerated aGvHD. In line with these data, analysis of donor T cells in blood, secondary lymphoid organs, and target organs of aGvHD after BMT showed significantly reduced numbers of miR-181a–transduced T cells, as compared with controls. In addition, expansion of activated T cells with enhanced miR-181a expression was reduced in vitro and in vivo. We further show that anti-apoptotic BCL-2 protein expression is reduced in murine and human T cells upon overexpression of miR-181a, suggesting that regulation of BCL-2-expression by miR-181a may contribute to altered alloreactivity of T cells in aGvHD. These data indicate that proteins regulated by miR-181a may be therapeutic targets for aGvHD prevention.
Necrotizing fasciitis: A decade of surgical intensive care experience

Necrotizing fasciitis is a rare disease, potentially limb and life-threatening infection of fascia, subcutaneous tissue with occasionally muscular involvement. Necrotizing faciitis is a surgical emergency with high morbidity and mortality. Aim: Aim of this study was to analyze presentation, microbiology, surgical, resuscitative management and outcome of this devastating soft tissue infection. Materials and Methods: The medical records of necrotizing fasciitis patients treated in surgical intensive care unit (SICU) of our hospital from Jan 1995 to Feb 2005 were reviewed retrospectively. Results: Ninety-four patients with necrotizing fasciitis were treated in the surgical intensive care unit during the review period. Necrotizing fasciitis accounted for 1.15% of total admissions to our SICU. The mean age of our patients was 48.6 years, 75.5% of the cases were male. Diabetes mellitus was the most common comorbid disease (56.4%), 24.5% patients had hypertension, 14.9% patients had coronary artery disease, 9.6% had renal disease and 6.4% cases were obese. History of operation (11.7%) was most common predisposing factor in our patients. All patients had leucocytosis at admission to the hospital. Mean duration of symptoms was 3.4 days. Mean number of surgical debridement was 2.1, mean sequential organ failure assessment (SOFA) score at admission to SICU was 8.6, 56.38% cases were type 1 necrotizing fasciitis and 43.61% had type 2 infection. Streptococci were most common bacteria isolated (52.1%), commonest regions of the body affected by necrotizing fasciitis were the leg and the foot. Mean intubated days and intensive care unit (ICU) stay were 4.8 and 7.6 days respectively. Mean fluid, blood, fresh frozen plasma and platelets concentrate received in first 24 hours were 4.8 liters, 2.0 units, 3.9 units and 1.6 units respectively. Most commonly used antibiotics were piperacillin with tazobactum and clindamycin. Common complication was ventricular tachycardia (6.4). 46.8% patients had multi organ dysfunction, 15 of them died giving a mortality of 16% in this study. Conclusion: Necrotizing fasciitis is more common in males, diabetes mellitus was the most common comorbid disease, type 1-necrotizing fasciitis was more common and the most common regions of the body affected by necrotizing fasciitis were the leg and the foot.
Cache Friendly Parallelization of Neural Encoder-Decoder Models Without Padding on Multi-core Architecture

Scaling up Artificial Intelligence (AI) algorithms for massive datasets to improve their performance is becoming crucial. In Machine Translation (MT), one of most important research fields of AI, models based on Recurrent Neural Net- works (RNN) show state-of-the-art performance in recent years, and many researchers keep working on improving RNN-based models to achieve better accuracy in translation tasks. Most implementations of Neural Machine Translation (NMT) models employ a padding strategy when processing a mini-batch to make all sentences in a mini-batch have the same length. This enables an efficient utilization of caches and GPU/SIMD parallelism but leads to a waste of computation time. In this paper, we implement and parallelize batch learning for a Sequence-to- Sequence (Seq2Seq) model, which is the most basic model of NMT, without using a padding strategy. More specifically, our approach forms vectors which represent the input words as well as the neural network's states at different time steps into matrices when it processes one sentence, and as a result, the approach makes a better use of cache and optimizes the process that adjusts weights and biases during the back-propagation phase. Our experimental evaluation shows that our implementation achieves better scalability on multi-core CPUs. We also discuss our approach's potential to be used in other implementations of RNN-based models.
Hodological characterization of the septum in anuran amphibians: I. Afferent connections

On the basis of Nissl‐stained sections, we subdivided the septum of the gray treefrog Hyla versicolor in the lateral, central, and medial septal complex. The afferent projections of the different septal nuclei were studied by combined retrograde and anterograde tracing with biotin ethylendiamine (Neurobiotin). The central and medial septal complex receives direct input from regions of the olfactory bulb and from all other limbic structures of the telencephalon (e.g., amygdalar regions, nucleus accumbens), whereas projections to the lateral septal complex are absent or less extensive. The medial pallium projects to all septal nuclei. In the diencephalon, the anterior thalamic nucleus provides the main ascending input to all subnuclei of the anuran septum, which can be interpreted as a limbic/associative pathway. The ventromedial thalamic nucleus projects to the medial and lateral septal complex and may thereby transmit multisensory information to the limbic system. Anterior preoptic nucleus, suprachiasmatic nucleus, and hypothalamic nuclei innervate the central and lateral septal complex. Only the nuclei of the central septal complex receive input from the brainstem. Noteworthy is the relatively strong projection from the nucleus raphe to the central septal complex, but not to the other septal nuclei. J. Comp. Neurol. 483:415–436, 2005. © 2005 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
In Vitro and In Vivo Potentiation of Artemisinin and Synthetic Endoperoxide Antimalarial Drugs by Metalloporphyrins

ABSTRACT The in vitro potentiation of artemisinin by synthetic manganese porphyrin complexes has been recently reported (F. Benoit-Vical, A. Robert, and B. Meunier, Antimicrob. Agents Chemother. 43:2555–2558, 1999). Since the activity of artemisinin and synthetic antimalarial endoperoxides is related to their interaction with heme (S. R. Meshnick, A. Thomas, A. Ranz, C. M. Xu, and H. Z. Pan, Mol. Biochem. Parasitol. 49:181–190, 1991), an improvement of their efficiency may be expected in the presence of a synthetic metalloporphyrin having the same activating role as endogenous heme. With the aim to boost the activity of antimalarial endoperoxide drugs, we were thus led to evaluate the in vitro and in vivo potentiation of natural and synthetic drugs of this family by a nontoxic and cheap metalloporphyrin. The potentiation of artemisinin, β-artemether, and arteflene (Ro 42-1611) by synthetic heme models is reported. In vitro studies on the chloroquine-resistant Plasmodium falciparumFcB1-Columbia strain indicate a synergistic effect of the manganese complex of meso-tetrakis(4-sulfonatophenylporphyrin) (Mn-TPPS) on the activity of artemisinin or β-artemether, whereas this heme model has no influence on the activity of arteflene. A significant synergistic effect on rodent malaria was also observed in vivo between artemisinin and Mn-TPPS using Plasmodium vinckei petteri strain.
Valuing Executive Stock Options: Performance Hurdles, Early Exercise and Stochastic Volatility

Accounting standards require companies to assess the fair value of any stock options granted to executives and employees. We develop a model for accurately valuing executive and employee stock options, focusing on performance hurdles, early exercise and uncertain volatility. We apply the model in two case studies and show that properly computed fair values can be significantly lower than traditional Black-Scholes values. We then explore the implications for pay-for-performance sensitivity and the design of effective share-based incentive schemes. We find that performance hurdles can require a much greater fraction of total compensation to be a fixed salary, if pre-existing incentive levels are to be maintained. Copyright (c) 2008 The Authors. Journal compilation (c) 2008 AFAANZ.
Determination of pH using water protons and chemical exchange dependent saturation transfer (CEST)

Solution pH was measured using water proton NMR via chemical exchange dependent saturation transfer (CEST) with selected chemical exchange sites. Several useful pH‐sensitive proton chemical exchange agents were found: 5,6‐dihydrouracil, 5‐hydroxytryptophan, and a combination of 5‐hydroxytryptophan and 2‐imidazolidinethione. A ratiometric approach was developed that permitted pH determinations that were independent of water T1 or exchange site concentration. Magn Reson Med 44:799–802, 2000. Published 2000 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Theoretical Foundation for Upsets in CMOS Circuits Due to High-Power Electromagnetic Interference

The performance and reliability of CMOS integrated circuits are severely affected by high-power electromagnetic interference (EMI), resulting in serious operational upsets, critical bit errors, and reversible or irreversible failures. Based on experimental evidence from individual MOSFETs and CMOS cascaded inverters, the fundamental causes for such upsets are examined, and a new theoretical foundation based on excess charge effects and the nonlinear continuity equation for high level injection is developed. A new modified drain current MOSFET equation that includes the effects of EMI is proposed. The key experimental evidence that leads to the development of the theory and the validation of the theory are discussed. Comparisons between the experimental and calculated results based on the modified equation were found to be in excellent agreement. The modified MOSFET equation can now be used in the design, modeling, and simulation of CMOS ICs to predict vulnerabilities and to improve reliability and performance of CMOS electronic systems operating in critical and adverse environments.
The Aztecs of Central Mexico: An Imperial Society

1. Mexico and Mexica. 2. Economic Organization. 3. Social Structure and Dynamics. 4. Daily Life. 5. Imperial Politics and Warfare. 6. Religious Organization and Beliefs. 7. Intellectual and Artistic Achievements. 8. The Consequences of Conquest.
Convergence from below? The reform of minimum income protection in France and the UK

Through a systematic comparison of major reforms to minimum income benefits for people of working age in France and the UK, this paper assesses the scope for cross-national convergence in this growing sector of European welfare states. It shows that while differing institutional legacies have shaped the precise design of the new minimum income systems that have been put in place on each side of the Channel in recent years, there is also evidence of an increasingly common conceptualisation of the function of the last safety net and its articulation with the labour market, despite the two countries' still very different political economies. This suggests the potential across welfare states for convergence “from below” on broader understandings of the role of social security provisions in regulating economic life.
The business case for sustainability? An examination of small firms in the UK's construction and restaurant sectors

Studies show that despite a concerted attempt by UK policy-makers to portray ‘eco-efficiency’ measures as cost reducing, most owner-managers of small firms view environmental measures as expensive to undertake. As a result, owner-managers tend to be highly resistant to voluntarily improving their environmental performance. Given that SMEs are such a vast sector of the economy, this perceived discord between profits and environmental protection is clearly a major barrier to the ‘greening’ of industry. This ESRC-funded study has sought to unearth the underlying motivations for why SME owner-managers in the UK resist or accept the idea that there are business benefits for improving their environmental performance. The findings from 40 in-depth interviews with SME owners in the UK's construction and restaurant sectors and 12 ‘key informants’ from industry and government are presented, followed by a discussion of SME perspectives on the ‘business case’ for sustainability and its implications for policy-makers. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.
Improved Particle Swarm Optimized SVM for Short-term Traffic Flow Predication

Short-term traffic flow predication has played a key role in ITS. Since traffic flow has the property of periodicity and randomicity, a new short-tern traffic flow predication model based on support vector machine (SVM) is proposed, the parameter performance of SVM for regression estimation, the parameter of SVM is optimized by an improved particle swarm optimization (IPSO). The IPSO uses the dynamic best inertia weight and acceleration coefficient, which avoids the PSO plunging into local optima and make it converge faster. As the proposed model can reduce the dimensionality of data space and preserve features of traffic flow time series, it can predict traffic flow efficiently. The simulation results of traffic flow collected from Chinese national highway G107 show that the IPSO-SVM has greater efficiency and better performance than PSO-SVM. The average predication error is 3.3%, which proves the proposed model's validity.
Theme Based Blog Opinion Extraction

Nowadays, people tend to express their opinions in their own blog space. Usually, different people have different thoughts on the same event from different aspects. For example, student A might think UIUC is a great place to be a graduate student because of its excellent faculty and challenging research projects, while student B thinks that UIUC classes are generally more difficult on average and complains that he don’t have time to hang out with friends; student C thinks UIUC is awesome because there are few distractions so he can enjoy his studies, while student D thinks life at UIUC is very sad and boring as there are not many places to have fun. This project aims to implement a Blog Miner, which could automatically extract opinions from blogs to summarize different thoughts on the same event from multiple aspects. Basically, the Blog Miner will primarily start as an opinion finder, based on the many public weblogs available online. Users will be able to enter in keywords and pick a subject area to find the popular opinions of topics of interest. For example, the keyword “Harry Potter” and the subject area of “Movie” would give users some notion of the popular opinion of the movie Harry Potter taken from blogs. This work involves two tasks: (1) modeling the multiple aspects of opinions for each subject (e.g., cars, movies); (2) extracting sentiments/opinions for each aspect. The mining results will be represented in two dimensions: theme and sentiment. In the theme dimension, each blog article will be partitioned into multiple themes by classifying sentences. In the sentiment dimension, each sentence will be measured by how positive/negative its opinion is about the query topic. In this way, by searching for “Toyota Camry”, the user would expect to see what people say about the price, engine, maintainance etc., and what the positive or negative opinions are for each aspect.