Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Association of antibodies to Plasmodium falciparum reticulocyte binding protein homolog 5 with protection from clinical malaria

Emerging evidence suggests that antibodies against merozoite proteins involved in Plasmodium falciparum invasion into the red blood cell (RBC) play an important role in clinical immunity to malaria. The protein family of parasite antigens known as P. falciparum reticulocyte binding protein-like homolog (PfRh) is required for RBC invasion. PfRh5 is the only member within the PfRh family that cannot be genetically deleted, suggesting it plays an essential role in parasite survival. This antigen forms a complex with the cysteine-rich P. falciparum Rh5 interacting protein (PfRipr), on the merozoite surface during RBC invasion. The PfRh5 ectodomain sequence and a C-terminal fragment of PfRipr were cloned and expressed in Escherichia coli and baculovirus-infected cells, respectively. Immunization of rabbits with these recombinant proteins induced antibodies able to inhibit growth of various P. falciparum strains. Antibody responses to these proteins were investigated in a treatment–re-infection study conducted in an endemic area of Papua New Guinea (PNG) to determine their contribution to naturally acquired immunity. Antibody titers to PfRh5 but not PfRipr showed strong association with protection against P. falciparum clinical episodes. When associations with time-to-first infection were analyzed, high antibody levels against PfRh5 were also found to be associated with protection from high-density infections but not from re-infection. Together these results indicate that PfRh5 is an important target of protective immunity and constitutes a promising vaccine candidate.
Vagal modulation of resting heart rate in rats: the role of stress, psychosocial factors, and physical exercise

In humans, there are large individual differences in the levels of vagal modulation of resting heart rate (HR). High levels are a recognized index of cardiac health, whereas low levels are considered an important risk factor for cardiovascular morbidity and mortality. Several factors are thought to contribute significantly to this inter-individual variability. While regular physical exercise seems to induce an increase in resting vagal tone, chronic life stress, and psychosocial factors such as negative moods and personality traits appear associated with vagal withdrawal. Preclinical research has been attempting to clarify such relationships and to provide insights into the neurobiological mechanisms underlying vagal tone impairment/enhancement. This paper focuses on rat studies that have explored the effects of stress, psychosocial factors and physical exercise on vagal modulation of resting HR. Results are discussed with regard to: (i) individual differences in resting vagal tone, cardiac stress reactivity and arrhythmia vulnerability; (ii) elucidation of the neurobiological determinants of resting vagal tone.
Kinematic Analyses of the Thumb during Simulated Posteroanterior Glide Mobilization

Objective Thumb problems are common in some health professionals such as physical therapists. The purpose of this case-control study is to investigate the influence of clinical experience and different mobilization techniques on the kinematics of the thumb. Methods Twenty-three participants without exposure to manual techniques (the Novice Group) and fifteen physical therapists with at least 3 years of orthopedic experience (the Experienced Group) participated. The kinematics of the thumb while performing 3 different simulated posteroanterior (PA) glide mobilization techniques on a load cell was monitored. These 3 techniques were: 1) unsupported, 2) with digital support and 3) with thumb interphalangeal joint supported by the index finger. The amount of forces exerted were 25% to 100% of maximum effort at 25% increments. The main effects of experience and technique on thumb kinematics were assessed. Results Both experience and technique had main effects on the flexion/extension angles of the thumb joints. Experienced participants assumed a more flexed position at the carpometacarpal (CMC) joint, and the novice participants performed with angles closer to the neutral position (F = 7.593, p = 0.010). Participants’ metacarpophalangeal (MCP) joints were in a more flexed position while performing PA glide with thumb interphalangeal (IP) joint supported by the index as compared to the other two techniques (p < .001). Conclusions Negative correlations were generally obtained between the sagittal plane angles of adjacent thumb joints during mobilization/manipulation. Therapists are recommended to treat patient with more stable PA glide mobilization techniques, such as PA glide with thumb interphalangeal joint supported by the index finger, to prevent potential mobilization-related thumb disorders.
Constrained Software and Runtime System Generation for Embedded Applications

In this paper we focus on the problem of synthesis of the software component of mixed system designs. Mixed systems are composed of interacting hardware components such as general-purpose processors and application-speciic circuits and software components that execute on the general-purpose hardware. The software component consists of application-speciic routines that must deliver the required system functionality and a runtime environment. Further, the software is required to deliver functionality under constraints on timing and memory storage available. We consider methods to achieve software generation under imposed constraints and demonstrate the utility of our approach by examples.
Bacterial endophytes from wild maize suppress Fusarium graminearum in modern maize and inhibit mycotoxin accumulation

Wild maize (teosinte) has been reported to be less susceptible to pests than their modern maize (corn) relatives. Endophytes, defined as microbes that inhabit plants without causing disease, are known for their ability to antagonize plant pests and pathogens. We hypothesized that the wild relatives of modern maize may host endophytes that combat pathogens. Fusarium graminearum is the fungus that causes Gibberella Ear Rot (GER) in modern maize and produces the mycotoxin, deoxynivalenol (DON). In this study, 215 bacterial endophytes, previously isolated from diverse maize genotypes including wild teosintes, traditional landraces and modern varieties, were tested for their ability to antagonize F. graminearum in vitro. Candidate endophytes were then tested for their ability to suppress GER in modern maize in independent greenhouse trials. The results revealed that three candidate endophytes derived from wild teosintes were most potent in suppressing F. graminearum in vitro and GER in a modern maize hybrid. These wild teosinte endophytes could suppress a broad spectrum of fungal pathogens of modern crops in vitro. The teosinte endophytes also suppressed DON mycotoxin during storage to below acceptable safety threshold levels. A fourth, less robust anti-fungal strain was isolated from a modern maize hybrid. Three of the anti-fungal endophytes were predicted to be Paenibacillus polymyxa, along with one strain of Citrobacter. Microscopy studies suggested a fungicidal mode of action by all four strains. Molecular and biochemical studies showed that the P. polymyxa strains produced the previously characterized anti-Fusarium compound, fusaricidin. Our results suggest that the wild relatives of modern crops may serve as a valuable reservoir for endophytes in the ongoing fight against serious threats to modern agriculture. We discuss the possible impact of crop evolution and domestication on endophytes in the context of plant defense.
Lis1–Nde1-dependent neuronal fate control determines cerebral cortical size and lamination

Neurons in the cerebral cortex originate predominantly from asymmetrical divisions of polarized radial glial or neuroepithelial cells. Fate control of neural progenitors through regulating cell division asymmetry determines the final cortical neuronal number and organization. Haploinsufficiency of human LIS1 results in type I lissencephaly (smooth brain) with severely reduced surface area and laminar organization of the cerebral cortex. Here we show that LIS1 and its binding protein Nde1 (mNudE) regulate the fate of radial glial progenitors collaboratively. Mice with an allelic series of Lis1 and Nde1 double mutations displayed a striking dose-dependent size reduction and de-lamination of the cerebral cortex. The neocortex of the Lis1–Nde1 double mutant mice showed over 80% reduction in surface area and inverted neuronal layers. Dramatically increased neuronal differentiation at the onset of corticogenesis in the mutant led to overproduction and abnormal development of earliest-born preplate neurons and Cajal–Retzius cells at the expense of progenitors. While both Lis1 and Nde1 are known to regulate the mitotic spindle orientation, only a moderate alteration in mitotic cleavage orientation was detected in the Lis1–Nde1 double deficient progenitors. Instead, a striking change in the morphology of metaphase progenitors with reduced apical attachment to the ventricular surface and weakened lateral contacts to neighboring cells appear to hinder the accurate control of cell division asymmetry and underlie the dramatically increased neuronal differentiation. Our data suggest that maintaining the shape and cell–cell interactions of radial glial neuroepithelial progenitors by the Lis1–Nde1 complex is essential for their self renewal during the early phase of corticogenesis.
CONFER: Towards Groupware for Building Consensus in Collaborative Software Engineering

Distributed computing technology allows software engineering teams to work across different locations and times, collaboratively refining documents or diagrams ultimately producing a single agreed outcome. A natural part of this process is the emergence of differences or conflicts reflecting divergent team member perspectives, interpretations, skills or knowledge. This paper describes CONFER (CONflict Free Editing in a Replicated architecture) a system that address the handling of conflicts in collaborative software development projects. At the technical level, CONFER detects and stores conflicts until they are resolved by user actions. However, it is in the social domain that these user actions are formed and resolved, so effective collaboration tools will need to include support for conflict resolution in the social domain as well. Some software engineering teams will be based on models of cooperation and maintenance of team harmony may require that conflict resolution be based on discussion and consensus, rather than by authority or by simple voting systems. A consensus building approach is proposed based on a method used in travel planning (Chu-Caroll, 2000) that encourages participants to further explore alternatives together with their own proposals. The social support mechanism has been simulated using paper and pen and assessed in a small experiment. The evaluation suggests that the technique is easy to use, reduces conflict resolution time and may be a useful extension to CONFER.
Analysing user generated content related to art history

For the canon of important works of art, lots of information is available on the Internet. Different Web platforms exist that show artworks with additional information and an Art historical description. While this information is suitable for experts in Art history, users without this expert knowledge may find this information hard to access because of a vocabulary mismatch between experts and laypersons. In order to allow users with different expertise to communicate and comprehend Art in their own vocabulary we have created the explorARTorium (www.explorARTorium.info), which visualises artworks in context and allows users to browse along different narratives. The explorARTorium also offers the possibility to annotate artworks. We have therefore collected a Folksonomy about artworks. Applying Data Mining algorithms on this Folksonomy, we show that the reproduction of Art historical facts is possible. Moreover, we are able to analyse the extent of Art historical knowledge among people of the 21st century.
Raising Awareness of the Constituents of Software Design - The Case of Documentation

This research was performed within a software engineering workshop for Computer Science students. For addressing the soft skills issues required by the industry, the course was delivered as a workshop with various (inter and intra) team based activities. An additional objective of outlining the importance of software maintainability issues was achieved through team-based role play. There were three assignments in which each team had to continue the work performed by another team, thus creating a dependency between the teams as might happen during maintenance. The main research study objective was to examine the effect of employing this kind of a team-based role-play peer-review on the students’ learning process regarding maintainability. Data referring to the students’ perceptions is presented and analyzed in addition to student reflections on the workshop which demonstrate their expanded understanding of the design and application process.
Faint 1.4-GHz radio sources in the 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey

We have used the Australia Telescope Compact Array (ATCA) to search for faint radio sources in a ∼3 deg 2 region of sky covered by the 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey (2dFGRS). Over the region surveyed, the 1σ noise level at 1.4 GHz ranges from 20 μJy to 1 mJy. The survey region includes 365 2dFGRS galaxies, of which 316 have good-quality spectra (176 early-type galaxies or active galactic nuclei, and 140 star-forming galaxies). The fraction of 2dFGRS galaxies detected as radio sources in our survey rises from ∼4 per cent at a 3σ detection limit of 0.3 mJy to 12 per cent at 75 μJy, with roughly equal numbers of star-forming galaxies and active galactic nuclei (AGNs) being detected. The radio luminosity function derived from this sample agrees with earlier determinations, and we find that while the mean redshift of the radio-detected galaxies increases toward lower flux densities for star-forming galaxies, it remains roughly constant for the AGN/early-type radio detections. We discuss possible observing strategies for a submJy radio survey of a larger 2dFGRS region, and show that a survey covering 100 deg 2 could measure the global evolution of the star formation density to z ∼ 0.1 in a way which is less affected by reddening than traditional measurements using optical emission lines and ultraviolet photometry.
A Spline-based Volumetric Data Modeling Framework and Its Applications

In this dissertation, we concentrate on the challenging research issue of developing a spline-based modeling framework, which converts the conventional data (e.g., surface meshes) to tensor-product trivariate splines. This methodology can represent both boundary/volumetric geometry and real volumetric physical attributes in a compact and continuous fashion. The regular tensor-product structure enables our new developed methods to be embedded into the industry standard seamlessly. These properties make our techniques highly preferable in many physically-based applications including mechanical analysis, shape deformation and editing, virtual surgery training, etc.
Domain-initial articulatory strengthening in four languages

This paper is about one way in which prosody affects individual speech segments, with segmental phonetics showing a perhaps surprising sensitivity to higher-level linguistic structure. By prosody we mean the phrasal and tonal organization of speech. We will show that phonetic properties of individual segments depend on their prosodic position, or position in prosodic structure. It is well-known that in a monosyllabic CVC word, the initial consonant can be pronounced differently than the final consonant, the initial consonant being longer and having greater articulatory magnitude (e. Some interesting recent acoustic studies have extended this line of inquiry above the syllable and word level to phrasal levels. For example, at the LabPhonII conference, Pierrehumbert & Talkin (1992) presented a study in which they used acoustic measures of breathiness to show that /h/ is more consonant-like when it is phrase-initial than when it is phrase-medial (" The phrase boundary was found to shift articulation on both sides in a more consonantal direction " , p. 116). Similarly, the Voice Onset Time (VOT) of /t/ is longer phrase-initially. This latter result was extended by Jun (1993), who compared the VOT of Korean /p h / in three positions: initial in a small phrase, initial in a word, medial in a word; VOT varied as shown in Figure X.1. 10 30 50 70 Phrase initial Word initial Word medial Figure X.1. VOT of Korean /p h / as a function of prosodic position. Our summary of data from Jun 1993:235 (Figure 6.2).
A Low Level Component Model enabling Resource Specialization of HPC Applications

Scientific applications are still getting more complex, e.g. to improve their accuracy by taking into account more phenomena. Moreover, computing infrastructures are continuing their fast evolution. Therefore, software engineering is becoming a major issue to achieve easiness of development, portability, simple maintenance, while achieving high performance. Software component model is a promising approach, which enables to manipulate the software architecture of an application. However, existing models do not capture enough resource specificities. This paper proposes a low level component model (L2C) that supports directly native connectors such as MPI, shared memory and method invocation. L2C is intended to be used as a back end by a ''compiler'' (such as HLCM) to generate an application assembly specific to a given machine. This paper shows on a typical domain decomposition use case that \llc can achieve the same performance as native implementations, while gaining benefits such as enabling resource specialization capabilities.
Unpacking collaboration: non-human agency in the ebb and flow of practice-based visual art research

ABSTRACT Practice-based visual art research is a field that inadvertently recognises the role of non-human actors in the creative process. Generally, the relation is described in terms of the artist’s skilful manipulation of objects and materials and the symbolic interpretation of these actions. This paper uses an actor-network approach to argue for a reconsideration of non-human actors as vital collaborators and explores how such relations disrupt assumptions of artistic control. I conclude with a description of how intention, motivation and knowledge are generated in these crucial relations.
Latency Reduction Using CRF-Based Predictive Caching

Reducing the Web access latency perceived by a Web user has become a problem of interest. Web prefetching and caching are two effective techniques that can be used together to reduce the access latency problem on the Internet. Because the success of Web prefetching mainly relies on the prediction accuracy of prediction methods, in this paper we employ a powerful sequential learning model, Conditional Random Fields (CRFs), to improve the Web page prediction accuracy for Web prefetching. We also propose a predictive caching scheme by incorporating CRF-based Web prefetching and caching together to reduce the perceived waiting time of Web users further. We show in our experiments that by using CRF-based Web predictive caching, we can achieve higher cache hit ratio and thus reduce more access latency with less extra transmission cost when compared with the predictive caching methods based on the well known Markov Chain models.
Risk reduction in autonomous local path-planning for a mobile robot with set fitness function

This paper presents Reduce risk of a genetic algorithm based path-planning algorithm for local obstacle avoidance of a mobile robot with change in fitness function. The method tries to find not only a valid path but also an optimal one. The objectives are to minimize the length of the path and the number of turns. The proposed path planning method allows use some effective parameter to define fitness function, therefore we success to reduce risk and reach optimal path.
Relative Levels of M-CSF and GM-CSF Influence the Specific Generation of Macrophage Populations during Infection with Mycobacterium tuberculosis1

Members of the CSF cytokine family play important roles in macrophage recruitment and activation. However, the role of M-CSF in pulmonary infection with Mycobacterium tuberculosis is not clear. In this study, we show the lungs of mice infected with M. tuberculosis displayed a progressive decrease in M-CSF in contrast to increasing levels of GM-CSF. Restoring pulmonary M-CSF levels during infection resulted in a significant decrease in the presence of foamy macrophages and increased expression of CCR7 and MHC class II, specifically on alveolar macrophages. In response to M-CSF, alveolar macrophages also increased their T cell-stimulating capacity and expression of DEC-205. These studies show that the levels of expression of M-CSF and GM-CSF participate in the progression of macrophages into foamy cells and that these cytokines are important factors in the differentiation and regulation of expression of dendritic cell-associated markers on alveolar macrophages. In addition, these studies demonstrate that M-CSF may have a role in the adaptive immune response to infection with M. tuberculosis.
ALMS1-Deficient Fibroblasts Over-Express Extra-Cellular Matrix Components, Display Cell Cycle Delay and Are Resistant to Apoptosis

Alström Syndrome (ALMS) is a rare genetic disorder (483 living cases), characterized by many clinical manifestations, including blindness, obesity, type 2 diabetes and cardiomyopathy. ALMS is caused by mutations in the ALMS1 gene, encoding for a large protein with implicated roles in ciliary function, cellular quiescence and intracellular transport. Patients with ALMS have extensive fibrosis in nearly all tissues resulting in a progressive organ failure which is often the ultimate cause of death. To focus on the role of ALMS1 mutations in the generation and maintenance of this pathological fibrosis, we performed gene expression analysis, ultrastructural characterization and functional assays in 4 dermal fibroblast cultures from ALMS patients. Using a genome-wide gene expression analysis we found alterations in genes belonging to specific categories (cell cycle, extracellular matrix (ECM) and fibrosis, cellular architecture/motility and apoptosis). ALMS fibroblasts display cytoskeleton abnormalities and migration impairment, up-regulate the expression and production of collagens and despite the increase in the cell cycle length are more resistant to apoptosis. Therefore ALMS1-deficient fibroblasts showed a constitutively activated myofibroblast phenotype even if they do not derive from a fibrotic lesion. Our results support a genetic basis for the fibrosis observed in ALMS and show that both an excessive ECM production and a failure to eliminate myofibroblasts are key mechanisms. Furthermore, our findings suggest new roles for ALMS1 in both intra- and extra-cellular events which are essential not only for the normal cellular function but also for cell-cell and ECM-cell interactions.