Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Rationale for a Multimodality Strategy to Enhance the Efficacy of Dendritic Cell-Based Cancer Immunotherapy

Dendritic cells (DC), master antigen-presenting cells that orchestrate interactions between the adaptive and innate immune arms, are increasingly utilized in cancer immunotherapy. Despite remarkable progress in our understanding of DC immunobiology, as well as several encouraging clinical applications – such as DC-based sipuleucel-T for metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer – clinically effective DC-based immunotherapy as monotherapy for a majority of tumors remains a distant goal. The complex interplay between diverse molecular and immune processes that govern resistance to DC-based vaccination compels a multimodality approach, encompassing a growing arsenal of antitumor agents which target these distinct processes and synergistically enhance DC function. These include antibody-based targeted molecular therapies, immune checkpoint inhibitors, therapies that inhibit immunosuppressive cellular elements, conventional cytotoxic modalities, and immune potentiating adjuvants. It is likely that in the emerging era of “precision” cancer therapeutics, tangible clinical benefits will only be realized with a multifaceted – and personalized – approach combining DC-based vaccination with adjunctive strategies.
Automated Verification of Asynchronous Circuits Using Circuit Petri Nets

To detect problematic circuit behaviour, such as potential hazards and deadlocks, in a reasonable amount of time a technique is required which would avoid exhaustive exploration of the state space of the system. Many of the existing methods rely on symbolic traversal of the state space, with the use of binary decision diagrams (BDDs) and associated software packages. This paper presents an alternative approach of using a special type of Petri nets to represent circuits. An algorithm for automatic conversion of a circuit netlist into a behaviourally equivalent Petri net is proposed. Once the circuit Petri net is constructed and composed with the provided environment specification, the presence and reachability of troublesome states is verified by using methods based on finite prefixes of Petri net unfoldings. The shortest trace leading to a deadlock or a hazard in the circuit Petri net is mapped back onto the gate-level representation of the circuit, thus assisting a designer in solving the problem. The method has been automated and compared against previously existing circuit verification tools.
The impact of mitochondrial DNA on human lifespan: A view from studies on centenarians

The role of inherited and somatic mutations of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) in aging and longevity is complex and highly controversial, owing to its peculiar genetics, including the phenomenon of heteroplasmy. Most of the data on mtDNA and longevity have been obtained on humans and particularly on centenarians, i. e. , people who escaped or delayed the major age‐related pathologies and reached the extreme limit of human lifespan. In this review we summarize the most recent advances in this field that suggest a consistent role in human longevity of both germ‐line inherited and somatically acquired mutations. The particular case of the association with longevity of the somatic C150T mutation is extensively discussed, challenging the tenet that mtDNA mutations are basically detrimental. We also stress several limitations of our present knowledge, regarding the difficulty in extrapolating to humans the results obtained in animal models, owing to a variety of biological differences, including the very limited genetic variability of mtDNA in the strains used in laboratory experiments. The use of high‐throughput technologies and the extensive analysis, possibly at the single cell level, of different tissues and cell types derived from the same individual will help in disentangling the complexity of mtDNA in aging and longevity.
Why Eliciting and Managing Legal Requirements Is Hard

The increasing complexity of IT systems and the growing demand for regulation compliance are main issues for the design of IT systems. Addressing these issues requires the developing of effective methods to support the analysis of regulations and the elicitation of any organizational and system requirements from them. This work investigates the problem of designing regulation-compliant systems and, in particular, the challenges in eliciting and managing legal requirements.
RoboTable2: a novel programming environment using physical robots on a tabletop platform

In this paper, we propose a novel environment called RoboTable2 that supports users with limited programming knowledge or experience in conducting robot programming. We have devised a tabletop platform that can simultaneously recognize multi-touch input and track physical robots, enabling users to conduct robot-programming tasks in an intuitive manner. A user study comparing the proposed and a conventional graphical programming environment was conducted, involving ten university students with no programming experience. The effects of the proposed environment were clarified via video analysis, questionnaires and usage logs. A pilot study was also conducted to verify how easily users could design and develop applications on RoboTable2. The lessons learned with respect to design guidelines for the proposed programming environment and issues for investigation are discussed.
‘We did more rough sleeping just to be together’ – Homeless drug users’ romantic relationships in hostel accommodation

Aims: This article explores the intimate relationships of homeless drug users (HDUs) who stay in emergency hostels and night shelters. Methods: Data collection took place across South Central England and involved semi-structured interviews with 40 HDUs (29 males; 11 females), who were currently staying, or had recently stayed, in emergency hostels and shelters. Interviews were professionally transcribed and systematically coded. Data relating to participants’ intimate relationships were retrieved and analysed using Framework. Findings: Fourteen individuals were currently in a relationship, and all 40 had previously been in a relationship, often whilst homeless. Key themes and concepts identified were: relationship commitment and the desire to be together; physical proximity, including sexual intercourse, and the role of anomalous bodies; enforced separations and their impact on relationships; relationship problems and risks; and the beneficial effects of relationships on anxiety, isolation, safety and the management and reduction of drug consumption. Conclusions: Despite barriers and difficulties, HDUs can and do engage in functional and positive romantic relationships. Services which are unsympathetic or hostile to HDUs’ needs for meaningful intimate relationships potentially exacerbate the social exclusion HDUs already experience and may undermine one of the few forms of social capital that they are able to access.
Chandra Localization of XTE J1906+090 and Discovery of Its Optical and Infrared Counterparts

We present the Chandra identification and localization of the transient X-ray source XTE J1906+090 and the discovery of its optical and infrared counterparts. Our analysis of archival Chandra ACIS-I observations of the field found the source approximately 8' away from the position determined earlier with the RXTE PCA. We have confirmed the source identification with timing analysis of the X-ray data, which detected the source spin period of 89.6 s. The best Chandra position for the source is R.A. = 19h04m47. ˢ491, decl. = +09°02′41. ″40. Subsequently, we performed optical observations of the field around the new location and discovered a coincident optical source with R-band magnitude of 18.7. A search in the Two Micron All Sky Survey catalog revealed an infrared point source with J = 15.2, H = 14.2, and K = 13.5, whose location is also coincident with our Chandra and optical positions. Our results add fresh evidence for a Be/X-ray transient nature for XTE J1906+090.
FACE DETECTION AND SMILE DETECTION

Due to the rapid development of computer hardware design and software technology, the user demands of electric products are increasing gradually. Different from the traditional user interface, such as keyboard and mouse, some new human computer interactive system like the multi-touch technology of Apple iPhone and the touch screen support of Windows 7 are catching more and more attention. For medical treatment, there are some eye-gaze tracking systems developed for cerebral palsy and multiple sclerosis patients. In this paper, we propose a real-time, accurate, and robust smile detection system and compare our method with the smile shutter function of Sony DSC T300. We have better performance than Sony on slight smile.
New tools for the encoding of lexical data extracted from corpus

This paper describes the methodology and tools that are the basis of our platform AAILE.4 AAILE has been built for supplying those working in the construction of lexicons for syntactic parsing with more efficient ways of visualizing and analyzing data extracted from corpus. The platform offers support using techniques such as similarity measures, clustering and pattern classification.
Molecular cloning and functional characterisation of chicken Atonal homologue 1: A comparison with human Atoh1

The vertebrate basic helix‐loop‐helix transcription factor Atoh1 is essential for maturation and survival of mechanosensory hair cells of the inner ear, neurogenesis, differentiation of the intestine, homeostasis of the colon and is implicated in cancer progression. Given that mutations in Atoh1 are detected in malignant tumours, study of functionally different Atoh1 alleles and homologues might yield useful avenues for investigation. The predicted sequence of chicken Atoh1 (cAtoh1) has large regions of dissimilarity to that of mammalian Atoh1 homologues. We hypothesise that cAtoh1 might have intrinsic functional differences to mammalian Atoh1.
Mapping of Visual Receptive Fields by Tomographic Reconstruction

The moving bar experiment is a classic paradigm for characterizing the receptive field (RF) properties of neurons in primary visual cortex (V1). Current approaches for analyzing neural spiking activity recorded from these experiments do not take into account the point-process nature of these data and the circular geometry of the stimulus presentation. We present a novel analysis approach to mapping V1 receptive fields that combines point-process generalized linear models (PPGLM) with tomographic reconstruction computed by filtered-back projection. We use the method to map the RF sizes and orientations of 251 V1 neurons recorded from two macaque monkeys during a moving bar experiment. Our cross-validated goodness-of-fit analyses show that the PPGLM provides a more accurate characterization of spike train data than analyses based on rate functions computed by the methods of spike-triggered averages or first-order Wiener-Volterra kernel. Our analysis leads to a new definition of RF size as the spatial area over which the spiking activity is significantly greater than baseline activity. Our approach yields larger RF sizes and sharper orientation tuning estimates. The tomographic reconstruction paradigm further suggests an efficient approach to choosing the number of directions and the number of trials per direction in designing moving bar experiments. Our results demonstrate that standard tomographic principles for image reconstruction can be adapted to characterize V1 RFs and that two fundamental properties, size and orientation, may be substantially different from what is currently reported.
New Region-Scalable Discriminant and Fitting Energy Functional for Driving Geometric Active Contours in Medical Image Segmentation

We propose a novel region-based geometric active contour model that uses region-scalable discriminant and fitting energy functional for handling the intensity inhomogeneity and weak boundary problems in medical image segmentation. The region-scalable discriminant and fitting energy functional is defined to capture the image intensity characteristics in local and global regions for driving the evolution of active contour. The discriminant term in the model aims at separating background and foreground in scalable regions while the fitting term tends to fit the intensity in these regions. This model is then transformed into a variational level set formulation with a level set regularization term for accurate computation. The new model utilizes intensity information in the local and global regions as much as possible; so it not only handles better intensity inhomogeneity, but also allows more robustness to noise and more flexible initialization in comparison to the original global region and regional-scalable based models. Experimental results for synthetic and real medical image segmentation show the advantages of the proposed method in terms of accuracy and robustness.
Prevalence and association of vitamin D deficiency and mortality in patients with severe sepsis

Background Vitamin D is a steroid prohormone that regulates body calcium and phosphate metabolism. Recent studies have shown an association between low vitamin D status and high mortality in patients admitted to intensive care units. To date, there are limited data available specifically about severely septic patients in medical units. Objectives To determine the prevalence of vitamin D deficiency in severely septic patients and its clinical outcomes, including mortality rate. Methods A prospective observational study was conducted to investigate the prevalence of vitamin D deficiency and its association with 30-day mortality in patients with severe sepsis. Patients admitted to medical wards at our hospital between November 2014 and March 2015 were included in the study. A 25-hydroxyvitamin D level <20 ng/mL was defined as vitamin D deficiency, and <12 ng/mL as severe deficiency. For an association analysis, the patients were grouped into deficient versus not deficient and severely deficient versus not severely deficient. Results One hundred and ten eligible patients were enrolled. A total of 83 patients (75%) had vitamin D deficiency and 42 (38%) had severe deficiency. Despite an insignificant higher 30-day hospital mortality rate in vitamin D deficient versus non-deficient groups (16% vs 4%, p=0.18), the differences were significant between the severely deficient versus non-severe groups (23% vs 4%, p=0.02). The odds ratio of the 30-day mortality rate was 4.83 (95% confidence interval [CI], 0.60–38.77, p=0.14) for vitamin D deficiency and 7.69 (95% CI, 2.00–29.55, p=0.003) for severe deficiency. Conclusion The prevalence of vitamin D deficiency was very high in three-quarters of patients with severe sepsis. A significant higher mortality rate was observed, particularly in patients with severe vitamin D deficiency.
Absolutely Exponential Stability and Temperature Control for Gas Chromatograph System Under Dwell Time Switching Techniques

This paper provides a design strategy for temperature control of the gas chromatograph. Usually gas chromatograph is modeled by a simple first order system with a time-delay, and a proportion integration (PI) controller is widely used to regulate the output of the gas chromatograph to the desired temperature. As the characteristics of the gas chromatograph varies at the different temperature range, the single-model based PI controller cannot work well when output temperature varies from one range to another. Moreover, the presence of various disturbance will further deteriorate the performance. In order to improve the accuracy of the temperature control, multiple models are used at the different temperature ranges. With a PI controller designed for each model accordingly, a delay-dependent switching control scheme using the dwell time technique is proposed to ensure the absolute exponential stability of the closed loop. Experiment results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed switching technique.
CAD Revisited

The CAD model posits a mapping of contempt, anger, and disgust onto the moral codes of community, autonomy, and divinity, respectively. A recent study by Hutcherson and Gross posited moral disgust as the dominant other-condemning emotion across all three moral codes. However, the methodology used may have incidentally increased the relevance of disgust. In the current experiment, one condition repeated Hutcherson and Gross’s procedure, while in another condition, the authors added the word moral to three other emotions. Consistent with CAD, anger had the highest intensity ratings in response to autonomy violations, whereas “grossed out” was the dominant response to divinity violations. Furthermore, the adjective “moral” increased the relevance of anger, contempt, and fear in irrelevant domains, which suggests that the adjective moral increases any emotion’s moral relevance.
Do older primigravidas differ from younger primigravidas in their emotional experience of pregnancy?

This preliminary study tested the hypothesis that older primigravidas feel emotionally more stressed during pregnancy than younger primigravidas. Two groups of 30 women were assessed using the GHQ‐12 self‐report questionnaire. Cases were primigravidas aged 35 or older, controls were primigravidas aged 20–30. The sampling frame was divided into three groups of 10 women, each group representing one of the three pregnancy trimesters. The study demonstrated the feasibility of using the GHQ‐12 questionnaire in antenatal clinics. Older primigravidas took more time in antenatal consultations. No significant difference was found between the groups of women, although a small number in both were very anxious. Qualitative data obtained from an open‐ended question revealed pregnancy‐related anxieties in approximately half of the women.
Testbed for Internet of Things and Wireless Sensor Networks

Time is ripe for what has been envisioned in the past two decades - the possibility of interconnecting everyday things to collect and exchange data amongst themselves, popularly known as the Internet of Things (IoT). The Internet of Things is the newest communication paradigm which is fuelling productivity and efficiency, and simplifying lives of people in di↵erent areas such as home automation where connected devices can handle more operations such as regulating the temperature, controlling the lighting, and monitoring the home hence freeing up the home owner to concentrate on other tasks. Self-driving cars which heavily depend on the IoT architecture are being introduced in the automotive industry to reduce road accidents and increase efficiency of road users. Other industries are also embracing IoT to boost their efficiency. IoT devices are equipped with processors to perform computations on the data, actuators and sensors to interact with the environment, and IP addresses to communicate over the Internet. In an IoT ecosystem exists a Wireless Sensor Network (WSN), which is a network of low powered electronic nodes that consist of di↵erent sensors which are used in collecting data from the environment. Achieving a seamlessly integrated IoT and WSN architecture is complex because of the heterogeneous nature of the devices, link layer technologies, and the services involved. By ”heterogeneous”, we mean the use of di↵erent hardware architectures. It is harder for developers of IoT applications and WSN protocols to carry out their development work in such a complex environment. In this thesis, we build and implement a testbed for IoT and WSN developers to run their experiments in a controlled and realistic environment. The testbed comprises of heterogeneous embedded hardware which gives it a real world touch of an IoT ecosystem. In this testbed, users can schedule their experiments using the testbed management software, run them and log results at the end of the experiments. We have also developed an inexpensive tool for debugging IoT embedded hardware and the programs running on it. The results of our work are discussed and evaluated in the evaluation chapter of this report.
Rictor positively regulates B cell receptor signaling by modulating actin reorganization via ezrin

As the central hub of the metabolism machinery, the mammalian target of rapamycin complex 2 (mTORC2) has been well studied in lymphocytes. As an obligatory component of mTORC2, the role of Rictor in T cells is well established. However, the role of Rictor in B cells still remains elusive. Rictor is involved in B cell development, especially the peripheral development. However, the role of Rictor on B cell receptor (BCR) signaling as well as the underlying cellular and molecular mechanism is still unknown. This study used B cell–specfic Rictor knockout (KO) mice to investigate how Rictor regulates BCR signaling. We found that the key positive and negative BCR signaling molecules, phosphorylated Brutons tyrosine kinase (pBtk) and phosphorylated SH2-containing inositol phosphatase (pSHIP), are reduced and enhanced, respectively, in Rictor KO B cells. This suggests that Rictor positively regulates the early events of BCR signaling. We found that the cellular filamentous actin (F-actin) is drastically increased in Rictor KO B cells after BCR stimulation through dysregulating the dephosphorylation of ezrin. The high actin-ezrin intensity area restricts the lateral movement of BCRs upon stimulation, consequently reducing BCR clustering and BCR signaling. The reduction in the initiation of BCR signaling caused by actin alteration is associated with a decreased humoral immune response in Rictor KO mice. The inhibition of actin polymerization with latrunculin in Rictor KO B cells rescues the defects of BCR signaling and B cell differentiation. Overall, our study provides a new pathway linking cell metablism to BCR activation, in which Rictor regulates BCR signaling via actin reorganization.
Emerging applications of OR/MS: emergency response planning and production planning in semiconductor and printing industry

SUMMARY Operations Research and Management Science (OR/MS) techniques have beenwidely used by decision-makers to address a wide range of problems in public, privateand nonproﬂt sectors. Although the usage of operations research techniques hasstarted with military applications during World War II, currently these techniquesare used in several contexts such as production planning, logistics management andhealth care management.In this thesis, we study three emerging applications of OR/MS, namely, (i) dis-ease spread modeling, intervention strategies, and food supply chain managementduring an in°uenza pandemic, (ii) the practical applications of production plan-ning and scheduling in the commercial lithographic printing industry, and (iii) pack-ing/placement problems in chip design in the semiconductor industry.In the ﬂrst part of the thesis, Chapter 2, we study an emergency response planningproblem motivated by discussions with the American Red Cross, which has taken ona responsibility to feed people in case of an in°uenza pandemic. During an emergencysuch as an in°uenza pandemic or a bioterror attack, regular distribution channels ofcritical products and services including food and water may be disrupted, or someof the infected individuals may not be able to go to grocery stores. We analyzethe geographical spread of the disease and develop solution approaches for designingthe food distribution supply chain network in case of an in°uenza pandemic. Inaddition, we investigate the eﬁect of voluntary quarantine on the disease spread andfood distribution supply chain network. Finally, we analyze the eﬁect of in°uenzapandemic on the workforce level.xii