Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Throughput Modeling of Differentiation Schemes for IEEE 802.11e MAC Protocol

Most recent analyses on IEEE802.11e quality of service (QoS)-aware enhanced distributed coordination function (EDCA) require a large degree of complexity, making it difficult to apply them to a wide range of parameter settings for the evaluation of service differentiation mechanisms supported in EDCA, including the Contention Window (CW) and Arbitration Inter-Frame Space (AIFS) mechanisms. In this paper, we propose an improved analytical model to analyze the throughput of EDCA with AIFS and CW differentiation schemes. The model is simplified by decomposing the problem into two easily solved Markov chains that can jointly be solved by numerical method. We present simulation and analytical results over a broad range of system parameters to demonstrate the accuracy of the proposed model. The model is simple to implement and can be applied to general configuration circumstances for the evaluation of EDCA. The results are valuable to facilitate proper design of parameters in 802.11e enhanced distributed channel access for the QoS support required by specific applications.
Ataxia telangiectasia and rad3-related kinase contributes to cell cycle arrest and survival after cisplatin but not oxaliplatin

The DNA cross-linking agents cisplatin and oxaliplatin are widely used in the treatment of human cancer. Lesions produced by these agents are widely known to activate the G1 and G2 cell cycle checkpoints. Less is known about the role of the intra–S-phase checkpoint in the response to these agents. In the present study, two different cell lines expressing a dominant-negative kinase dead (kd) version of the ataxia telangiectasia and rad3-related (ATR) kinase in an inducible fashion were examined for their responses to these two platinating agents and a variety of other DNA cross-linking drugs. The expression of the kdATR allele markedly sensitized the cells to cisplatin, but not to oxaliplatin, as assessed by inhibition of colony formation, induction of apoptosis, and cell cycle analysis. Similar differences in survival were noted for melphalan (ATR dependent) and 4-hydroperoxycyclophosphamide (ATR independent). Further experiments showed that ATR function is not necessary for removal of Pt-DNA adducts. The predominant difference between the responses to the two platinum drugs was the presence of a drug-specific ATR-dependent S-phase arrest after cisplatin but not oxaliplatin. These results indicate that involvement of ATR in the response to DNA cross-linking agents is lesion specific. This observation might need to be taken into account in the development and use of ATR or Chk1 inhibitors. [Mol Cancer Ther 2009;8(4):855–63]
Cutting Edge: Predetermined Avidity of Human CD8 T Cells Expanded on Calibrated MHC/Anti-CD28-Coated Microspheres 1

Cytotoxic CD8 T cells are key effectors in the immunotherapy of malignant and viral diseases. However, the lack of efficient methods for their in vitro priming and expansion has become a bottleneck to the development of vaccines and adoptive transfer strategies. Synthetic artificial APCs (aAPCs) are now emerging as an attractive tool for eliciting and expanding CTL responses. We show that, by controlling the MHC density on aAPCs, high- or low-avidity tumor-directed human CTL lines can be raised effectively in vitro if costimulation via CD28 and IL-12 is provided. Compared with low-avidity CTL lines, high-avidity CTLs need 100- to 1000-fold less peptide for activation, bind more MHC tetramers, and, as expected, are superior in recognizing tumor cell lines expressing Ag. We believe that the possibility to raise Ag-specific T cells with predetermined avidity will be crucial for the future use of aAPCs in immunotherapeutical settings.
EVOLUTION OF THE TALOS MISSILE

At the beginning of World War II, the principal threat to Allied surface ships was from dive-bombing or torpedo-carrying aircraft, with speeds on the order of 250 knots. The airplanes had to make a long, slow, straight-in approach rather close to the target in order to deliver their weapons. This put them in positions where antiaircraft gunfire was quite effective and attrition rates were high. With the advent of proximity-fuzed antiaircraft shells in 1943, enemy planes were even less able to mount conventional attacks without incurring unacceptable losses. However, it was foreseeable that this advantage of defense over attack would not long continue. As high-performance turbojet and rocket engines became available, and with the advent of radioguided bombs, it was evident that small, high-speed, air-launched missiles might become a threat to ships whose antiaircraft shells had insufficient range to prevent enemy airplanes from launching such missiles. A solution to this dilemma was to provide ships with defensive weapons of such range, accuracy, and speed that attacking airplanes would be unable to approach near enough to launch antiship missiles. In the fall of 1944, responding to an inquiry by the Bureau of Ordnance (BuOrd) regarding the feasibility and time scale of such a development, APL proposed a program for a supersonic, radar-guided, ramjetpropelled missile, launched by a solid propellant booster rocket and carrying a payload of about 600 pounds of explosives. It was suggested that, in a period of two to three years and with an expenditure of 10 to 20 million dollars, an initial version of such a "chaser missile" could be produced or, conversely, that proof could be provided that such devices could not be built. It was also proposed that such a development should be sharply focused on the specific objective of developing a supersonic guided missile and be carried out by a closely integrated team responsible for the solution of the overall problem. The an-
Structural Analysis of Respiratory Syncytial Virus Reveals the Position of M2-1 between the Matrix Protein and the Ribonucleoprotein Complex

ABSTRACT Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), a member of the Paramyxoviridae family of nonsegmented, negative-sense, single-stranded RNA genome viruses, is a leading cause of lower respiratory tract infections in infants, young children, and the elderly or immunocompromised. There are many open questions regarding the processes that regulate human RSV (hRSV) assembly and budding. Here, using cryo-electron tomography, we identified virus particles that were spherical, filamentous, and asymmetric in structure, all within the same virus preparation. The three particle morphologies maintained a similar organization of the surface glycoproteins, matrix protein (M), M2-1, and the ribonucleoprotein (RNP). RNP filaments were traced in three dimensions (3D), and their total length was calculated. The measurements revealed the inclusion of multiple full-length genome copies per particle. RNP was associated with the membrane whenever the M layer was present. The amount of M coverage ranged from 24% to 86% in the different morphologies. Using fluorescence light microscopy (fLM), direct stochastic optical reconstruction microscopy (dSTORM), and a proximity ligation assay (PLA), we provide evidence illustrating that M2-1 is located between RNP and M in isolated viral particles. In addition, regular spacing of the M2-1 densities was resolved when hRSV viruses were imaged using Zernike phase contrast (ZPC) cryo-electron tomography. Our studies provide a more complete characterization of the hRSV virion structure and substantiation that M and M2-1 regulate virus organization. IMPORTANCE hRSV is a leading cause of lower respiratory tract infections in infants and young children as well as elderly or immunocompromised individuals. We used cryo-electron tomography and Zernike phase contrast cryo-electron tomography to visualize populations of purified hRSV in 3D. We observed the three distinct morphologies, spherical, filamentous, and asymmetric, which maintained comparable organizational profiles. Depending on the virus morphology examined, the amount of M ranged from 24% to 86%. We complemented the cryo-imaging studies with fluorescence microscopy, dSTORM, and a proximity ligation assay to provide additional evidence that M2-1 is incorporated into viral particles and is positioned between M and RNP. The results highlight the impact of M and M2-1 on the regulation of hRSV organization.
Switched Detection Filter Design for Nonlinear Systems

This paper presents the application of the concept of detection filters to the detection of faults in nonlinear systems. The nonlinear dynamics in specific meaningful points of the operation is approximated by means of a matched array of linear systems. Then, linear filters are designed for each particular subsystem and a switching scheme is applied to carefully choose the most suitable filter regarding the operational characteristics of the plant in real time. Stability of the switching process is guaranteed by keeping the switching time between two consecutive switching large enough to ensure a proper falloff of filter transients. Therefore, apart from the solution of the standard linear-quadratic optimization problem represented by the detection filter design problem one has to derive sufficient conditions for the observation error dynamics to be globally asymptotically stable during switching. The goal is to find a common minimum of the switching time to each specific level calculated separately for every single filter that can be used as a restriction for the switching signal. The idea is demonstrated with the application to the detection of faults in the air path of a diesel engine. The results can be considered as the extension of the standard linear fault detection filtering problem to nonlinear systems.
Working conditions and work-related chronic diseases : A career-long retrospective study

Our goal is to estimate the impact of working conditions on the declaration of chronic diseases in France. Based on a rebuilt retrospective, lifelong panel, we use a mixed econometric strategy relying on Difference in differences with a matching method taking into account the endogeneity of working conditions as well as unobserved heterogeneity. We define different treatment variables including the simultaneity and duration of exposure to both physical and psychosocial working conditions. Our main results are as follow. Men are much more exposed than women to detrimental physical working conditions (but both are equally exposed to psychosocial working conditions), but the latter experience the biggest impact on their self-reported chronic diseases. For women, we find an effect of exposure on chronic diseases after the exposure to physical and psychosocial working conditions. In men, we find an impact of psychosocial exposure on their declaration of chronic diseases, but no effect of physical strains. JEL classifications: J81; I14; C32
Ischemia detection via ECG using ANFIS

An adaptive neuro-fuzzy interface system (ANFIS) classifier was used for automated detection of ischemic episodes resulting from ST-T segment elevation or depression. The performance of the method was measured using the European ST-T database. In particular, the performance was measured in terms of beat by- beat ischemia detection and in terms of the detection of ischemic episodes. The algorithm used to cluster and then train the ANFIS classifier. The resulting ANFIS is capable of detecting ischemia independent of the lead used. It was found that the average ischemia episode detection sensitivity is 88.62% and specificity is 99.65%. This method can be used in electrocardiogram (ECG) processing in cases where reliable detection of ischemic episodes is desired as in the case of critical care units (CCUs).
Semantics of Death Certification

apparently, an opinion common among the medical profession, many of whom regard death certification as a tedious chore to be delegated to the least qualified member of the clinical team for completion in whatever manner he pleases. Such practice, however, may lead to distress to relatives, inaccurate national statistics and inappropriate use of resources. In an early paper on the accuracy of medical certificates of cause of death Emery[2] drew attention to two possible sources of error: the wording of a certificate, and the degree of correlation between clinical opinion and subse-
Permissions Plugins as Android Apps

The permissions framework for Android is frustratingly inflexible. Once granted a permission, Android will always allow an app to access the resource until the user manually revokes the app's permission. Prior work has proposed extensible plugin frameworks, but they have struggled to support flexible authorization and isolate apps and plugins from each other. In this paper, we propose DALF, a framework for extensible permissions plugins that provides both flexibility and isolation. The insight underlying DALF is that permissions plugins should be treated as apps themselves. This approach allows plugins to maintain state and access system resources such as a device's location while being restricted by Android's process-isolation mechanisms. Experiments with microbenchmarks and case studies with real third-party apps show promising results: plugins are easy to develop and impose acceptable overhead for most resources.
Adaptive Linear Spectral Mixture Analysis

This paper presents a theory of adaptive linear spectral mixture analysis (ALSMA), which can implement LSMA using an adaptive linear mixing model (ALMM) that adjusts and varies with spectral signatures adaptively. In doing so, a recursive LSMA (RLSMA) is developed for ALSMA to allow LSMA to update spectral signature by spectral signature without reprocessing LSMA and also to fuse LSMA results obtained by ALMM using different sets of spectral signatures. To form ALMM, the concept of RLSMA-specified virtual dimensionality is further proposed for ALSMA, which not only can find spectral signatures recursively by RLSMA to adjust ALMM but also can automatically determine the number of spectral signatures via Neyman-Pearson detection theory.
Characterization of the T Cell Repertoire Following Personalized Neoantigen-Based Vaccination in Patients with Melanoma

2 Introduction . 4 Methods Part I: Characterization of the immune response following personalized neoantigen-based vaccination . 11 Part II: Identification of neoantigen-reactive T cell receptors and their cognate antigens using a streamlined cloning and expression system . 15 Results Part I: Characterization of the immune response following personalized neoantigen-based vaccination . 19 Part II: Identification of neoantigen-reactive T cell receptors and their cognate antigens using a streamlined cloning and expression system . 28 Discussion . 34 Conclusions . 42 Suggestions for Future Work . 43 Lay Summary . 46 References . 47 Supplement . 53
The Immune Effects of an African Traditional Energy Tonic in In Vitro and In Vivo Models

Most of the African traditional medicines (ATM) are formulated as energy tonics to boost and maintain immune defences. In this study, we aimed to evaluate the immune effects of a traditional energy tonic using peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs), THP-1 monocytes, and bacteria infected rats. When tested in mitogen and peptidoglycan stimulated PBMCs, this energy tonic showed minimal cytotoxicity, while in acute toxicity studies in rats it did not exhibit any significant toxicity at doses up to 2000 mg/mL/kg. The energy tonic doses between 100 and 10 μg/mL were shown to stimulate secretion of cytokines and increase sIL-2R levels in PHA-treated PBMCs. Similar doses in PG-S. aureus-stimulated PBMCs significantly (p < 0.05) increased IL-1α, IL-2, and GM-CSF while causing a significant (p < 0.05) decrease in sIL-2R levels. NF-κβ transcriptional activity was increased in LPS stimulated THP-1 cells. In Sprague Dawley rats pretreated with the energy tonic and then infected with S. aureus, there were insignificant increases in cytokines and sIL-2R when compared to bacteria infected only and 5% Enrofloxacin treated rats. Posttreatment with energy tonic doses after infection with S. aureus did not enhance inflammatory cytokines significantly but changed the immune response profile and decreased corticosterone levels. This ATM showed promising immunomodulatory effects on isolated immune cells and modulated the immune response of rat models infected with S. aureus.
Prediction of North Atlantic Oscillation Index with Convolutional LSTM Based on Ensemble Empirical Mode Decomposition

The North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) is the most significant mode of the atmosphere in the North Atlantic, and it plays an important role in regulating the local weather and climate and even those of the entire Northern Hemisphere. Therefore, it is vital to predict NAO events. Since the NAO event can be quantified by the NAO index, an effective neural network model EEMD-ConvLSTM, which is based on Convolutional Long Short-Term Memory (ConvLSTM) with Ensemble Empirical Mode Decomposition (EEMD), is proposed for NAO index prediction in this paper. EEMD is applied to preprocess NAO index data, which are issued by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and NAO index data are decomposed into several Intrinsic Mode Functions (IMFs). After being filtered by the energy threshold, the remaining IMFs are used to reconstruct new NAO index data as the input of ConvLSTM. In order to evaluate the performance of EEMD-ConvLSTM, six methods were selected as the benchmark, which included traditional models, machine learning algorithms, and other deep neural networks. Furthermore, we forecast the NAO index with EEMD-ConvLSTM and the Rolling Forecast (RF) and compared the results with those of Global Forecast System (GFS) and the averaging of 11 Medium Range Forecast (MRF) model ensemble members (ENSM) provided by the NOAA Climate Prediction Center. The experimental results show that EEMD-ConvLSTM not only has the highest reliability from evaluation metrics, but also can better capture the variation trend of the NAO index data.
Trust and Reputation Model for Various Online Communities

In World Wide Web there are many online communities with a huge number of users and a great amount of data which are continuously increasing. In this context it is important for users to interact with resources and other users according to their preferences. On this direction of information filtering domain our work is oriented to trust based filtering. We have developed a model formed by three interconnected components: trust component which allows computation of trust levels among users which are not directly connected, a component which computes reputation of entities in the system, and a recommendation component. Several sets of tests of our model have been performed and we have the possibility to integrate it in various online communities.
TIMES WITH DEPENDENT RENEWAL TYPE MODELS VIA

Failure times of a machinery cannot always be assumed independent and identically distributed, e.g. if after reparations the machinery is not restored to a same-as-new condition. Framed within the renewal processes approach, a generalization that considers exchangeable inter-arrival times is presented. The resulting model provides a more realistic approach to capture the dependence among events occurring at random times, while retaining much of the tractability of the classical renewal process. Extensions of some classical results and special cases of renewal functions are analyzed, in particular the one corresponding to an exchangeable sequence driven by a Dirichlet process. The proposal is tested through an estimation procedure using simulated data sets and with an application to the reliability of hydraulic subsystems in load-haul-dump machines.
PURIFICATION EXPERIMENTS ON THE PASIG RIVER, PHILIPPINES USING A CIRCULATION-TYPE PURIFICATION SYSTEM

Polluted sludge from the Pasig River generally exerts a very large environmental load to the surrounding area near the vicinity of Laguna de Bay and Manila Bay in the Philippines. Historically, the river was used to be a good route for transportation and an important source of water for the old Spanish Manila. However, the river is now very polluted due to human negligence and industrial development, and biologists consider it unable to sustain aquatic life. Many researchers have conducted studies on the Pasig River, unfortunately, no considerable progress from the point of view of purification process have succeeded. Hence, in this study, the use of fine-bubble technology for the purification of the polluted sludge from the said river is being explored. The critical point in using this technique is on the activation of the bacteria existing in the area using fine bubbles. The sludge is decomposed and purified by activating the aerobic bacteria after creating an aerobic state. In this study, the main objective is to test the performance of the purification system on the sludge and water taken from the Pasig River by comparing the results with the case study conducted in Funabashi Port, Japan. Based on the results of the study, it was established that the use of a circulation-type purification system is very good for it significantly decreased the total nitrogen in the samples from the Pasig River and Funabashi Port. Generally, the said system is considered effective in treating and purifying ocean or river sludge.
Effects of Exchangeable Ca : Mg Ratio on Soil Clay Flocculation , Infiltration and Erosion

*Katerina Dontsova, Dept. Agronomy, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 47907; L. Darrell Norton, USDA-ARS National Soil Erosion Research Lab, 1196 Soil Bldg. , West Lafayette, IN 47907. *Corresponding author dontsova@ecn.purdue. edu. ABSTRACT Soil erosion due to surface sealing is detrimental to soil resources and agricultural production. We would like to verify if Mg could cause surface sealing in Midwestern USA soils. It is generally accepted for sodic soils that Mg can have a negative effect on soil physical properties when its concentration is relatively high compared to Ca. However, for soils that do not have sodic properties there is also a possibility for deterioration of soil structure due to high Mg with consequent surface sealing, decreased infiltration, increased runoff and erosion during rainfall events. High Mg concentration in the soil solution can be natural or induced by input of dolomitic limestone. In this paper, we studied the influence of modified Ca:Mg ratios on surface sealing of four soils varying in organic matter content, clay content and mineralogy from the Midwestern USA. In a laboratory experiment flocculation behaviors of soil clays were studied at different Ca:Mg ratios and solution electrolyte. We also modified Ca:Mg ratios of bulk soils and measured infiltration, runoff and soil detachment under simulated rainfall. We showed that Mg has a specific effect on soil clay flocculation and surface sealing due to hydration behavior differing from Ca. There was a highly significant linear relationship between Ca percentage on the clay surface and in solution and optical transmittance of clay suspension as an indicator of clay flocculation. In rainfall experiments, Ca-treated well-structured soils (two out of four soils used) had final infiltration rates double that of Mg-treated soils, total infiltration was increased 20 to 100%. The Ca treatment decreased soil losses to half of those from Mg treatment. Thin sections of the surface seals showed evidence of greater aggregate destruction and clay translocation under the Mg treatment. This research presents evidence that it is beneficial to manage soils to high Ca:Mg ratio if they are prone to sealing.