Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Cross-fostering inhalation toxicity study with HCFC-123 in lactating Sprague-Dawley rats.

A study was performed in Sprague-Dawley rats (Crl:CD BR) to differentiate between effects of hydrofluorocarbon 123 (HCFC-123) on the lactating dam or on the fetus using fostering and cross-fostering of the offspring. Pregnant and/or lactating dams without the pups present were exposed to the test substance (1000 ppm) or clean air by whole-body inhalation for 6 h/day from day 6 to 19 post conceptionem (p.c.) and from day 5 to 21 post partum (p.p.). Pups were cross-fostered to new dams within the first 2 days after birth. Treatment of the mothers with HCFC-123 led to decreases in serum glucose, cholesterol, and triglycerides and increases in absolute and relative maternal liver weights. Decreased litter and individual pup weight and decreased serum triglycerides were observed in the pups of treated foster mothers. Treatment of the mothers with HCFC-123 did not influence milk production based on the body weight difference of the dam before suckling and 60 min after beginning of suckling using 12-pup "standard litters" of untreated dams. Total fat, glucose, and protein contents in the milk were also not influenced by the treatment. Trifluoroacetic acid (TFA), a main metabolite of HCFC-123, was observed in urine samples of standard litters that had been nursed by treated dams. In conclusion, the effects on offspring due to HCFC-123 treatment consisted of decreased pup weight and decreased serum triglycerides at weaning. All effects were due to treatment of the lactating dams, as no prenatally induced effects were found. Since milk production and nutritional constituents of the milk were not influenced, but significant amounts of the main metabolite were found in pup urine, an effect of HCFC-123 or its metabolite on the pups via maternal milk is considered to be a possible cause for their decreased weight gain.
Mechanistic aspects the dioxin (aryl hydrocarbon) receptor

The Ah receptor mediates the toxicological responses of 2,3,7,8-TCDD and related compounds. Receptor-deficient animals were shown to be resistant to the toxic effects of dioxin, although there is also evidence for the existence of a receptor-independent pathway for dioxin-induced toxicity. In the cytosol the receptor is present in a non-activated ligand binding conformation. Association with Arnt in the nucleus turns the receptor complex into a ligand activated form. The physiological role of the receptor is not yet understood; however, the conservation of the receptor in a wide range of animal species (including humans) suggests a fundamental role in cellular physiology.
Characterization of T-Cell Responses in Macaques Immunized with a Single Dose of HIV DNA Vaccine

ABSTRACT The optimization of immune responses (IR) induced by HIV DNA vaccines in humans is one of the great challenges in the development of an effective vaccine against AIDS. Ideally, this vaccine should be delivered in a single dose to immunize humans. We recently demonstrated that the immunization of mice with a single dose of a DNA vaccine derived from pathogenic SHIVKU2 (Δ4SHIVKU2) induced long-lasting, potent, and polyfunctional HIV-specific CD8+ T-cell responses (G. Arrode, R. Hegde, A. Mani, Y. Jin, Y. Chebloune, and O. Narayan, J. Immunol. 178:2318-2327, 2007). In the present work, we expanded the characterization of the IR induced by this DNA immunization protocol to rhesus macaques. Animals immunized with a single high dose of Δ4SHIVKU2 DNA vaccine were monitored longitudinally for vaccine-induced IR using multiparametric flow cytometry-based assays. Interestingly, all five immunized macaques developed broad and polyfunctional HIV-specific T-cell IR that persisted for months, with an unusual reemergence in the blood following an initial decline but in the absence of antibody responses. The majority of vaccine-specific CD4+ and CD8+ T cells lacked gamma interferon production but showed high antigen-specific proliferation capacities. Proliferative CD8+ T cells expressed the lytic molecule granzyme B. No integrated viral vector could be detected in mononuclear cells from immunized animals, and this high dose of DNA did not induce any detectable autoimmune responses against DNA. Taken together, our comprehensive analysis demonstrated for the first time the capacity of a single high dose of HIV DNA vaccine alone to induce long-lasting and polyfunctional T-cell responses in the nonhuman primate model, bringing new insights for the design of future HIV vaccines.
Firm Productivity as an Engine of Saving

This technical note considers whether low savings in Latin America and the Caribbean may result from low productivity rather than vice versa. Economies with low TFP growth tend to be economies in which returns to investments are low, with low saving rates as well. In that sense, low TFP growth, by providing weaker incentives to save, could be another determinant of the low saving rates observed in the region. Moreover, firms need to invest, which in turn requires that they can access financial markets. If instead, firms are constrained because of financial frictions, some entrepreneurs may have to run small firms and save in order to fund their projects, slowing down aggregate productivity growth. This note further examines the distribution of private savings in the economy and the behavior of firm saving to explore whether financial frictions distort price signals and incentives to save.
Image-based visual tracking to fast moving target for active binocular robot

The paper reports the control way of visual tracking to a fast moving target with using an active binocular robot. The robot consists of a pair of active cameras and performs as a stereo vision system. The motions of those cameras are controlled independently and achieve rigid visual tracking respectively. The difficulty of visual tracking to a fast target is to suppress the tracking delay, affected by the high-speed of the target and the rapid changes of its motions. Although we have established an explicit theory for non-delayed visual tracking in our previous works, it is fact that the good tuning of the control parameters should realize its own high performance. In this paper, we have examined the effective tunings of three types of the control parameters; the feedback gains for motion control and for visual servoing and the image capturing frequency. In several conditions, the higher performance on the visual tracking to a fast moving target has been achieved. The validity of the proposed method is confirmed in the many physical experimental results.
Main inhibitor of follicle stimulating hormone in the luteal-follicular transition: inhibin A, oestradiol, or inhibin B?

The roles of oestradiol, inhibin A and inhibin B in the luteal-follicular transition were assessed by means of specific assays. Six premenopausal women were studied during a control and then a cycle treated with percutaneous oestradiol 0.1 mg/day from day 10 after the luteinizing hormone (LH) surge until day 4 of the following cycle. Inhibin A concentrations decreased similarly in control and treated cycles from day -5 to day 2, then increased in control cycle to 23.3 +/- 3.4 pg/ml on day 10 (mean +/- SEM). They remained low until day 5 in treated cycles and were lower than controls on day 10 (P < 0.01). Follicle stimulating hormone (FSH) concentrations increased on day 1 in controls and on day 5 in treated cycles when oestradiol concentration fell abruptly. Inhibin B concentrations remained low until day 1 in controls and day 4 in treated cycles. In both, inhibin B concentrations increased 1 day after FSH, peaking at 160 pg/ml. FSH concentrations began to plateau when inhibin B concentrations were >100 pg/ml and oestradiol concentrations below 200 pmol/l. These data suggest that inhibin A is not responsible for FSH suppression in the luteal phase and that the negative control of FSH shifts from oestradiol in the luteal phase to inhibin B in the mid-follicular phase.
Identification of (R)-N-((4-Methoxy-6-methyl-2-oxo-1,2-dihydropyridin-3-yl)methyl)-2-methyl-1-(1-(1-(2,2,2-trifluoroethyl)piperidin-4-yl)ethyl)-1H-indole-3-carboxamide (CPI-1205), a Potent and Selective Inhibitor of Histone Methyltransferase EZH2, Suitable for Phase I Clinical Trials for B-Cell Lymp

Polycomb repressive complex 2 (PRC2) has been shown to play a major role in transcriptional silencing in part by installing methylation marks on lysine 27 of histone 3. Dysregulation of PRC2 function correlates with certain malignancies and poor prognosis. EZH2 is the catalytic engine of the PRC2 complex and thus represents a key candidate oncology target for pharmacological intervention. Here we report the optimization of our indole-based EZH2 inhibitor series that led to the identification of CPI-1205, a highly potent (biochemical IC50 = 0.002 μM, cellular EC50 = 0.032 μM) and selective inhibitor of EZH2. This compound demonstrates robust antitumor effects in a Karpas-422 xenograft model when dosed at 160 mg/kg BID and is currently in Phase I clinical trials. Additionally, we disclose the co-crystal structure of our inhibitor series bound to the human PRC2 complex.
The urokinase receptor (u‐PAR)—a link between tumor cell dormancy and minimal residual disease in bone marrow?  

Minimal residual disease (MRD) is hypothesized to be the major cause of tumor recurrence and metastasis even years and decades after primary cancer diagnosis and curative solid tumor resection. In these patients disseminated tumor cells reflecting MRD can be detected in the bone marrow years after treatment. It is to be assumed that genetic determinants and a complex interplay between the disseminated tumor cells and their microenvironment in the bone marrow are responsible for tumor cell dormancy and the final reactivation towards metastasis. The urokinase receptor (u‐PAR), a critical regulator of invasion, intravasation, and metastasis, is found to be a key player in regulating the shift between single cell tumor dormancy and proliferation. This has mainly been attributed to a regulation by u‐PAR of integrins, and the ability of the latter to propagate signals from fibronectin through the EGF‐receptor, ERK, and p38 signaling. Interestingly, u‐PAR is found in disseminated tumor cells in the bone marrow of solid cancer patients, and is associated with the expansion of these cells and clinical prognosis. Here we summarize and discuss findings on disseminated tumor cells in the bone marrow, MRD and the role of u‐PAR in tumor biology, especially focusing on its specific role in providing a switch between tumor cell proliferation and dormancy. Finally, we discuss the hypothesis that u‐PAR might be an essential molecule in bone marrow disseminated tumor cells for long‐term survival during dormancy, and/or reactivation of their proliferation years after primary treatment.
Toward Automated Analysis of Electrocardiogram Big Data by Graphics Processing Unit for Mobile Health Application

With the rapid development of mobile health technologies and applications in recent years, large amounts of electrocardiogram (ECG) signals that need to be processed timely have been produced. Although the CPU-based sequential automated ECG analysis algorithm (CPU-AECG) designed for identifying seven types of heartbeats has been in use for years, it is single-threaded and handling lots of concurrent ECG signals still poses a severe challenge. In this paper, we propose a novel GPU-based automated ECG analysis algorithm (GPU-AECG) to effectively shorten the program executing time. A new concurrency-based GPU-AECG, named cGPU-AECG, is also developed to handle multiple concurrent signals. Compared with the CPU-AECG, our cGPU-AECG achieves a 35 times speedup when handling 24-h-long ECG data, without reducing the classification accuracy. With cGPU-AECG, we can handle 24-h-ECG signals from thousands of users in a few seconds and provide prompt feedback, which not only greatly improves the user experience of mobile health services, but also reduces the economic cost of building healthcare platforms.
Generating landmark overviews with geo-tagged web photos

In this paper, we aim to propose an new approach to automatically generate text and photo overviews for landmarks, using the vast quantity of geo-tagged photos from photo sharing websites such as Flickr. To that end we first cluster a large-scale geo-tagged web photo collections into groups by location. And next, we make our focus on analyzing tags(user-entered text labels associated with a photo) and develop an TF-IDF like approach to evaluate the representativeness of a tag within group. To provide a more friendly and comprehensive overview, we try to mine topic patterns in each group. So we propose a clustering method among tags to discover some meaningful topics. The text overviews are generated based on tag's representativeness and topics discovered, and the photo overviews generating is simply a retrieval work according to the overview tags generated. We perform evaluations over 530,123 real geo-tagged photos taken in Beijing from Flickr and The experiment shows our approach can obtain a better result than state-of-the-art method.
55-nm SiGe BiCMOS Distributed Amplifier Topologies for Time-Interleaved 120-Gb/s Fiber-Optic Receivers and Transmitters

Two distributed circuits based on MOS-HBT cascodes are reported in a 55-nm SiGe BiCMOS technology and are aimed at a single-chip time-interleaved transceiver for future 1-Tb/s optical links. The first, a DC-135-GHz single-ended distributed amplifier (DA) was optimized for low noise, linear receivers, and has a measured noise figure (NF) <;7 dB up to 88.5 GHz, 800 mVpp of linear input range, and 8.5 dB gain. Operation was confirmed with PRBS-31 eye diagram measurements up to 120 Gb/s. Additionally, a novel time-interleaved distributed power DAC test circuit was implemented as a proof-of-concept to investigate the maximum achievable output bandwidth at a differential output voltage swing of 6 Vpp, as needed to directly drive an optical modulator. Simulations of the doubly segmented 6-bit DAC show 4-PAM output eye diagrams at up to 120 GBaud. The measured clock-input-to-data-output small-signal bandwidth is 65 GHz. When the DAC is measured as a switching large-swing driver, the differential output voltage swing remains larger than 5.4 Vpp beyond 50 Gb/s. Time interleaving of 4 thermometer MSBs is demonstrated experimentally to form a 1.8-Vpp differential, 10-GBaud 3-PAM output signal. The experimental sampling rate is limited to 10 GS/s by the capacitance and bandwidth of the low-frequency probes and pads used for the data lanes.
Automatic Detection of Song Changes in Music Mixes Using Stochastic Models

The annotation of song changes in music mixes created by DJs or radio stations for direct access in digital recordings is, usually, a very tedious work. In order to support this process we developed an automatic song change detection method which can be used for arbitrary music mixes. Stochastic models are applied to music data aiming at their segmentation with respect to automatically obtained abstract generic acoustic units. The local analysis of these stochastic music models provides hypotheses for song changes. Results of an experimental evaluation processing music mix data demonstrate the effectiveness of our method for supporting the annotation with respect to song changes
The moderating effect of social roles on user behavior in virtual worlds

Purpose – Virtual worlds are a typical form of social network syndication. Although the future of the virtual world phenomenon seems bright, not all efforts have succeeded. Therefore knowing how to motivate users and keep them continually engaged and visiting is an important challenge for those who create and manage virtual world websites. This paper aims to address these issues.Design/methodology/approach – The present study proposes a conceptual model from technological, entertainment and social perspectives to examine the determinants affecting users' intentions in their virtual worlds usage. Recognising that human behaviour varies according to different social roles, this study investigated four social roles (habitual, active, personal and lurker), and 729 valid data samples were collected from the Chinese virtual world, i‐Partment. Partial least square and multi‐group analysis were performed to measure the research model.Findings – The results of this study indicate that ease of use, usefulness, soci.
Image encryption in the fractional-order domain

This paper presents a new image encryption scheme based on the fractional-order Lorenz system which gives more degrees of freedom in key generation. In the modified fractional-order system, the key length is doubled using the three fractional-orde r parameters beside the three initial conditions, which makes it invulnerable to brute-force attacks. In addition, using a very simple algorithm, based on pixel confusion only, strongly encrypted images are produced. Such an algorithm can be used in real time applications. To evaluate the algorithm and analyze the encryption results, a standard image is used. A comparison of the colored correlation coefficients (horizontal, vertical, diagonal) for different cases with respect to a fractional-order parameter and another system parameter are introduced. Moreover, the encrypted image shows high sensitivity to the fractional-order key, which appears from the wrong decryption with 0.1% change of the fractional-order parameter.
Identifying a Small Molecule Blocking Antigen Presentation in Autoimmune Thyroiditis*

We previously showed that an HLA-DR variant containing arginine at position 74 of the DRβ1 chain (DRβ1-Arg74) is the specific HLA class II variant conferring risk for autoimmune thyroid diseases (AITD). We also identified 5 thyroglobulin (Tg) peptides that bound to DRβ1-Arg74. We hypothesized that blocking the binding of these peptides to DRβ1-Arg74 could block the continuous T-cell activation in thyroiditis needed to maintain the autoimmune response to the thyroid. The aim of the current study was to identify small molecules that can block T-cell activation by Tg peptides presented within DRβ1-Arg74 pockets. We screened a large and diverse library of compounds and identified one compound, cepharanthine that was able to block peptide binding to DRβ1-Arg74. We then showed that Tg.2098 is the dominant peptide when inducing experimental autoimmune thyroiditis (EAT) in NOD mice expressing human DRβ1-Arg74. Furthermore, cepharanthine blocked T-cell activation by thyroglobulin peptides, in particular Tg.2098 in mice that were induced with EAT. For the first time we identified a small molecule that can block Tg peptide binding and presentation to T-cells in autoimmune thyroiditis. If confirmed cepharanthine could potentially have a role in treating human AITD.
Postembryonic hematopoiesis in Drosophila.

We have investigated the blood cell types present in Drosophila at postembryonic stages and have analysed their modifications during development and under immune conditions. The anterior lobes of the larval hematopoietic organ or lymph gland contain numerous active secretory cells, plasmatocytes, few crystal cells, and a number of undifferentiated prohemocytes. The posterior lobes contain essentially prohemocytes. The blood cell population in larval hemolymph differs and consists mainly of plasmatocytes which are phagocytes, and of a low percentage of crystal cells which reportedly play a role in humoral melanisation. We show that the cells in the lymph gland can differentiate into a given blood cell lineage when solicited. Under normal nonimmune conditions, we observe a massive differentiation into active macrophages at the onset of metamorphosis in all lobes. Simultaneously, circulating plasmatocytes modify their adhesion and phagocytic properties to become pupal macrophages. All phagocytic cells participate in metamorphosis by ingesting doomed larval tissues. The most dramatic effect on larval hematopoiesis was observed following infestation by a parasitoid wasp. Cells within all lymph gland lobes, including prohemocytes from posterior lobes, massively differentiate into a new cell type specifically devoted to encapsulation, the lamellocyte.
A Novel Active Warden Technique for Image Steganography

This paper focuses on countering data hiding in images. Specifically, we refer to the active warden problem, a process which aims at disrupting the covert communications that are possibly taking place within host media. Although this has been extensively studied in the literature, typical state of the art approaches treat the hidden message as a noise-like component, proposing de- noising techniques, lossy compression or noise addition as a countermeasure. In this paper we present novel approach called Lesser Components Distortion (LCD) that aims at disrupting the covert communication while minimizing distortion on the host medium. Although stemming from insights gained from notable works in the spread spectrum steganography field, we prove through extensive testing that it shows remarkable effectiveness against steganographic techniques in general, compared to common attacks.
Plasmonic nanoring devices for micro- and nanoparticle trapping and detection using low incident laser powers

Trapping and detection of micro- and nano-objects at low incident laser powers in the near-infrared region (NIR) is crucial for many biological applications. Using a conventional optical tweezer method, trapping is limited to dielectric particles larger than 100nm in size with high incident laser powers. For this reason, plasmonic nanostructures, which have recently attracted research attentions, offered enhanced trapping fields at their resonant wavelengths, and subsequently can be used to trap and detect silica dielectric particles down to 12nm and single 3.4nm bovine serum albumin proteins using low incident powers (<; 1mW). In this work, we propose a design consisting of nanodisk and nanohole arrays on a 50 nm gold thin film. We demonstrate that this tunable nano-plasmonic device toward the NIR range can improve both the trapping field enhancement and detection of nano-objects using the singular phase drop methods. The tunability of the device was investigated from extinction and reflection spectra while increasing the aperture size in the arrays. The ellipsometric parameters were used to study the dark topologically-protected position, where a rapid change in phase can occur. Our experimental data suggests that, using this abrupt phase change, one can improve the detection sensitivity 10 times compared to the conventional extinction spectra method. In order to investigate the capability of trapping submicron particles with low incident laser powers, we integrated the nano-plasmonic device into a standard optical tweezer system. Stable trapping, with the capability of two-dimensional manipulation of 500 nm fluorescent polystyrene particles over large ranges for seveal minutes, was demonstrated using low incident laser powers of less than 500 μW at 950 nm. The optical trap stiffness and trapping efficiencies of these nanostructured plasmonics devices were experimentally analyzed. The experimental observation shows that stronger optical submicron particle traps can be achieved with approximately 20 times lower incident power when compared to the conventional optical tweezer method.