Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Spontaneous CD8+ T-Cell Response to HLA-A2-Restricted NY-ESO-1b Peptide in Hepatocellular Carcinoma Patients

Purpose: Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) can express various cancer-testis antigens including NY-ESO-1, members of the SSX family, members of the MAGE family, SCP-1, and CTP11. Immunotherapy directed against these antigens is a potential alternative treatment for HCC. To date, it remains unclear whether HCC patients have spontaneous immune responses to these tumor antigens. The objectives of this study were to measure immune responses to NY-ESO-1, a promising cancer vaccine candidate, in HCC patients using the HLA-A2–restricted NY-ESO-1b peptide (p157-165) to measure cellular responses and whole protein to measure antibody responses. Experimental Design: In HLA-A2+ patients with NY-ESO-1+ HCC, we analyzed T-cell antigen-dependent interferon (IFN)-γ and/or Granzyme B release by enzyme-linked immunospot (ELISPOT) assay and IFN-γ–producing intracellular cytokine flow cytometry (CytoSpot). As an assay independent of T-cell function, we performed tetramer staining. Antibodies to whole NY-ESO-1 were assayed by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. Results: The frequency of specific CD8+ T-cell responses to NY-ESO-1b in 28 NY-ESO-1 mRNA+HLA-A2+ HCC patients was 35.7% (10 of 28). The average magnitude of effector CD8+ T cells was 0.3% (89 ± 59 per 2.5 × 104 CD8+ cells) and 1.2% as measured by IFN-γ release ELISPOT and CytoSpot assays, respectively. These in vitro induced NY-ESO-1b–specific CD8+ T cells can also recognize HepG2 cells transfected with pcDNA3.1-NY-ESO-1 in both IFN-γ and Granzyme B ELISPOT assays. Frequencies of NY-ESO-1b–specific T cells in several patients were confirmed by tetramer staining. Nonfunctional tetramer+CD8+ T cells were also present. The CD8+ T-cell response was apparently increased in patients with late-stage HCC. A discordance between antibody and CD8+ T-cell responses in HCC patients was observed. Conclusions: The elevated frequency of specific CD8+ T-cell responses to NY-ESO-1b in NY-ESO-1 mRNA+HLA-A2+ HCC patients suggests that NY-ESO-1 is appropriate for use in the immunotherapy of HCC patients.
PSfrag replacements Primary road Secondary road Day Night Blink

The traffic light controller of a simple two-way intersection is specified by data flow components. The focus of this work is on the use of readable description techniques, such as state transition diagrams and tables, to hide the mathematical background of the specifications. A second main point is the use of automatic formal verification tools for the proof of some simple behavioral properties of the specification to validate the specifications.
The Relation between ADHD-like Behavior and Entrepreneurial Intentions, and the role of ESE in this Relation

The present study investigates the relationship between a psychiatric disorder, Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), and the entrepreneurial tendency of an individual. Taking into account the importance that entrepreneurial self-efficacy (ESE) has for an individual who pursues an entrepreneurial career, we will also examine whether it can, in some way, explain the potential impact of ADHD on entrepreneurial intentions. The dataset we use consists of 159 economic students from the Erasmus University Rotterdam and was gathered in September 2013. We will perform ordinary least squares regressions along with principal component analysis and Sobel test for the analysis of our data. The results indicate a positive association between entrepreneurial self-efficacy and entrepreneurial intentions, and a negative one between ADHD and entrepreneurial self-efficacy. With regard to our initial aim, we could not find conclusive evidence about a direct connection of ADHD with entrepreneurial intentions. However, we find supportive evidence about an indirect relation between ADHD-like behavior and entrepreneurial intentions through ESE. Our results suggest that a student with ADHD symptoms exhibits lower entrepreneurial self-efficacy, leading to fewer probabilities in becoming an entrepreneur. Due to the limitations of our study, future research is proposed for a more in-depth analysis of the present topic.
Neural correlates of explicit social judgments on vocal stimuli.

Functional neuroimaging research on the neural basis of social evaluation has traditionally focused on face perception paradigms. Thus, little is known about the neurobiology of social evaluation processes based on auditory cues, such as voices. To investigate the top-down effects of social trait judgments on voices, hemodynamic responses of 44 healthy participants were measured during social trait (trustworthiness [TR] and attractiveness [AT]), emotional (happiness, HA), and cognitive (age, AG) voice judgments. Relative to HA and AG judgments, TR and AT judgments both engaged the bilateral inferior parietal cortex (IPC; area PGa) and the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC) extending into the perigenual anterior cingulate cortex. This dmPFC activation overlapped with previously reported areas specifically involved in social judgments on 'faces. ' Moreover, social trait judgments were expected to share neural correlates with emotional HA and cognitive AG judgments. Comparison of effects pertaining to social, social-emotional, and social-cognitive appraisal processes revealed a dissociation of the left IPC into 3 functional subregions assigned to distinct cytoarchitectonic subdivisions. In total, the dmPFC is proposed to assume a central role in social attribution processes across sensory qualities. In social judgments on voices, IPC activity shifts from rostral processing of more emotional judgment facets to caudal processing of more cognitive judgment facets.
Motif simplification: improving network visualization readability with fan, connector, and clique glyphs

Analyzing networks involves understanding the complex relationships between entities, as well as any attributes they may have. The widely used node-link diagrams excel at this task, but many are difficult to extract meaning from because of the inherent complexity of the relationships and limited screen space. To help address this problem we introduce a technique called motif simplification, in which common patterns of nodes and links are replaced with compact and meaningful glyphs. Well-designed glyphs have several benefits: they (1) require less screen space and layout effort, (2) are easier to understand in the context of the network, (3) can reveal otherwise hidden relationships, and (4) preserve as much underlying information as possible. We tackle three frequently occurring and high-payoff motifs: fans of nodes with a single neighbor, connectors that link a set of anchor nodes, and cliques of completely connected nodes. We contribute design guidelines for motif glyphs; example glyphs for the fan, connector, and clique motifs; algorithms for detecting these motifs; a free and open source reference implementation; and results from a controlled study of 36 participants that demonstrates the effectiveness of motif simplification.
On the development of a cybernetic prosthetic hand

The human hand is the end organ of the upper limb, which in humans serves the important function of prehension, as well as being an important organ for sensation and communication. It is a marvellous example of how a complex mechanism can be implemented, capable of realizing very complex and useful tasks using a very effective combination of mechanisms, sensing, actuation and control functions. In this thesis, the road towards the realization of a cybernetic hand has been presented. After a detailed analysis of the model, the human hand, a deep review of the state of the art of artificial hands has been carried out. In particular, the performance of prosthetic hands used in clinical practice has been compared with the research prototypes, both for prosthetic and for robotic applications. By following a biomechatronic approach, i.e. by comparing the characteristics of these hands with the natural model, the human hand, the limitations of current artificial devices will be put in evidence, thus outlining the design goals for a new cybernetic device. Three hand prototypes with a high number of degrees of freedom have been realized and tested: the first one uses microactuators embedded inside the structure of the fingers, and the second and third prototypes exploit the concept of microactuation in order to increase the dexterity of the hand while maintaining the simplicity for the control. In particular, a framework for the definition and realization of the closed-loop electromyographic control of these devices has been presented and implemented. The results were quite promising, putting in evidence that, in the future, there could be two different approaches for the realization of artificial devices. On one side there could be the EMG-controlled hands, with compliant fingers but only one active degree of freedom. On the other side, more performing artificial hands could be directly interfaced with the peripheral nervous system, thus establishing a bi-directional communication with the human brain.
Outerjoins as disjunctions

The outerjoin operator is currently available in the query language of several major DBMSs, and it is included in the proposed SQL2 standard draft. However, “associativity problems” of the operator have been pointed out since its introduction. In this paper we propose a shift in the intuition behind outerjoin: Instead of computing the join while also preserving its arguments, outerjoin delivers tuples that come either from the join or from the arguments. Queries with joins and outerjoins deliver tuples that come from one out of several joins, where a single relation is a trivial join. An advantage of this view is that, in contrast to preservation, disjunction is commutative and associative, which is a significant property for intuition, formalisms, and generation of execution plans. Based on a disjunctive normal form, we show that some data merging queries cannot be evaluated by means of binary outerjoins, and give alternative procedures to evaluate those queries. We also explore several evaluation strategies for outerjoin queries, including the use of semijoin programs to reduce base relations.
Neuroplasticity in Young Age: Computer-Based Early Neurodevelopment Classifier

chapter Abstract Neurodevelopmental syndromes, a continuously growing issue, are impairments in the growth and development of the brain and CNS which are pronounced in a variety of emotional, cognitive, motor and social skills. Early assessment and detection of typical, clinically correlated early signs of developmental abnormalities is crucial for early and effective intervention, supporting initiation of early treatment and minimizing neurologi- cal and functional deficits. Successful early interventions would then direct to early time windows of higher neural plasticity. Various syndromes are reflected in early vocal and motor characteristics, making them suitable indicators of an infant ’ s neural development. Performance of the computerized classifiers we developed shows approximately 90% accuracyon a database of diagnosed babies. The results demonstrate the potential of vocal and motor analysis for computer-assisted early detection of neurodevelopmental insults.
A comparison of sequential consistency with home-based lazy release consistency for software distributed shared memory

A Distributed Shared Memory (DSM) system provides a distributed application with a shared virtual address space. Choosing a memory consistency model is one of the main decisions in designing a DSM system. While Sequential Consistency provides a simple and intuitive programming model, relaxed consistency models allow memory accesses to be parallelized, improving runtime performance. We implement the home-based lazy release consistency (HLRC) protocol that supports preemptive multithreading and compare its performance with the efficient multithreaded SC protocol. We perform an "apple-to-apple'' comparison on the same testbed environment and benchmark suite, and investigate the effectiveness and scalability of both these protocols.
Complex Disease Interventions from a Network Model for Type 2 Diabetes

There is accumulating evidence that the proteins encoded by the genes associated with a common disorder interact with each other, participate in similar pathways and share GO terms. It has been anticipated that the functional modules in a disease related functional linkage network are informative to reveal significant metabolic processes and disease’s associations with other complex disorders. In the current study, Type 2 diabetes associated functional linkage network (T2DFN) containing 2770 proteins and 15041 linkages was constructed. The functional modules in this network were scored and evaluated in terms of shared pathways, co-localization, co-expression and associations with similar diseases. The assembly of top scoring overlapping members in the functional modules revealed that, along with the well known biological pathways, circadian rhythm, diverse actions of nuclear receptors in steroid and retinoic acid metabolisms have significant occurrence in the pathophysiology of the disease. The disease’s association with other metabolic and neuromuscular disorders was established through shared proteins. Nuclear receptor NRIP1 has a pivotal role in lipid and carbohydrate metabolism, indicating the need to investigate subsequent effects of NRIP1 on Type 2 diabetes. Our study also revealed that CREB binding protein (CREBBP) and cardiotrophin-1 (CTF1) have suggestive roles in linking Type 2 diabetes and neuromuscular diseases.
Holistic View Angles of Cloud Computing Services Provisions

Cloud computing services (CCS) is a modern blend of provisioning technologies and management of resources formed on limited requirements such as accessibility, hypotheses of elasticity and massive deployment. This paradigm offers on-demand IT resources such as applications, networks, services, data, servers and storage that are readily accessible through the Internet. Need for globalisation and collaboration is currently driving the adoption/rollout of cloud technology. Therefore, the current provision of CCS is focused and segmented, addressing explicit concerns according to these needs. This presents challenges for integrated services such as the missing interfaces concerning the diverse attributes of CCS, the required techniques and dependencies for efficient rollout/adoption. This paper proposes 6-view angles necessary for offering CCS, including all their important criteria and categories. These proposed views should help CCS architects and software developers achieve diverse optimised services, enhance these services in relation to communication, power usage, and interfaces that will ease cost and time, make these services desirable and accessible.
A Fault Analysis in Reversible Sequential Circuits

In this paper, the researchers propose the design of reversible circuits using reversible gates. Reversible logic is implemented in reversible circuits. Reversible logic is mostly preferred due to less heat dissipation. Conservative logic gates can be designed in any sequential circuits and can be tested using two test vectors. The significance of proposed work lies in the design of reversible sequential circuits and their equivalent circuits for maximum fault coverage. The design of reversible sequential circuits using Toffoli gate and Peres gate is proposed in this literature. The design of Toffoli and Peres equivalent circuits is proposed first time in this literature, in order to achieve maximum fault coverage. The proposed Toffoli and Peres gates surpass the Fredkin gate and MXCQCA gate in terms of area, number of gates and timing. The simulation and coding is performed using cadence tool. Keywords—Reversible logic, Peres gate, Toffoli gate, Feynman gate, latches.
Confidence and Overconfidence in Political Economy∗

This paper studies the role of overconfidence in political behavior. We posit a simple model of overconfidence in beliefs that is founded on correlational neglect. The model predicts that overconfidence leads to ideological extremeness, increased voter turnout, and increased strength of partisan identification. Moreover, the model makes many nuanced predictions about the patterns of ideology in society, and across time. We test these predictions using novel survey data that allows for the measurement of overconfidence, and find that the predicted relationships are statistically and substantively important. ∗We wish to thank Stephen Ansolabehere, Marc Meredith, Chris Tausanovitch, and Christopher Warshaw for sharing their data. The authors are indebted to Scott Ashworth, Ethan Bueno de Mesquita, John Bullock, Antonio Merlo, Matthew Rabin, Holger Sieg, Mike Ting, and Leeat Yariv for useful discussions. We also thank seminar participants at Chicago’s Harris School, Harvard, the University of Maryland, and the University of Pennsylvania for thoughtful feedback.
Conductive Fe3O4 Nanoparticles Accelerate Syntrophic Methane Production from Butyrate Oxidation in Two Different Lake Sediments

Syntrophic methanogenesis is an essential link in the global carbon cycle and a key bioprocess for the disposal of organic waste and production of biogas. Recent studies suggest direct interspecies electron transfer (DIET) is involved in electron exchange in methanogenesis occurring in paddy soils, anaerobic digesters, and specific co-cultures with Geobacter. In this study, we evaluate the possible involvement of DIET in the syntrophic oxidation of butyrate in the enrichments from two lake sediments (an urban lake and a natural lake). The results showed that the production of CH4 was significantly accelerated in the presence of conductive nanoscale Fe3O4 or carbon nanotubes in the sediment enrichments. Observations made with fluorescence in situ hybridization and scanning electron microscope indicated that microbial aggregates were formed in the enrichments. It appeared that the average cell-to-cell distance in aggregates in nanomaterial-amended enrichments was larger than that in aggregates in the non-amended control. These results suggested that DIET-mediated syntrophic methanogenesis could occur in the lake sediments in the presence of conductive materials. Microbial community analysis of the enrichments revealed that the genera of Syntrophomonas, Sulfurospirillum, Methanosarcina, and Methanoregula were responsible for syntrophic oxidation of butyrate in lake sediment samples. The mechanism for the conductive-material-facilitated DIET in butyrate syntrophy deserves further investigation.
A TLA + Encoding of DEVS Models

Control Theory researchers have been using DEVS models to formalize discrete event systems for a long time [1] but, despite such systems are one of the main targets of Software Engineers, the DEVS formalism has not been used and it is hardly known by the formal methods community of Computer Science. This paper is an attempt to close the gap between these communities by setting some of the basic rules to translate DEVS models into TLA+ specifications. TLA+ [2] is a widely known formalism, used by formal methods researchers and practitioners, to specify –hardware or software based– reactive or concurrent systems. The paper includes some theoretical insights, some modeling design decisions and an example of the encoding we propose.
Robust voice activity detection algorithm based on the perceptual wavelet packet transform

In this paper, a robust voice activity detection (VAD) algorithm based on the perceptual wavelet packet transform (PWPT) is proposed. The first step of this new VAD algorithm is to make use of the PWPT to decompose the input speech into 17 critical subband signals. To enhance energy of voice frames and decay energy of unvoice frames, the voice activity shape (VAS) is derived from the Teager energy operator (TEO) of these critical subband signals. Then the adaptive weighted threshold (AWT) value can be calculated from the second derivative recursive mean (SDRM) of the VAS and environments noise estimation. It is shown in this paper that the AWT is a robust threshold value for VAD under various noisy environments. One of advantages of this new algorithm is that the preset threshold values are not necessary. In addition, the proposed algorithm can adapt VAD threshold value to variable speech conditions. Experimental results show that the new VAD algorithm outperforms the G.729B and adaptive multi rate (AMR) VAD.
Contamination control in food supply chain

In this paper, we study a contamination control problem in food supply chain. We formulate the problem as a dynamic programming problem and then study the structure of the optimal control which turns out to be very similar to the hedging-point type of policy. Under the environment in which there is uncertainty associated with contamination control, we propose a stochastic dynamic programming formulation with chance constraints, to which simulation based methods could be applied.
A Survey: Secure Data Aggregation in Wireless Sensor Networks

: Remote sensor systems (WSNs) are progressively utilized as a part of numerous applications, for example, spring of gushing lava and flame checking, urban detecting, and edge reconnaissance. In an extensive WSN, in-system information collection (i.e., joining incomplete results at middle of the road hubs amid message directing) altogether decreases the measure of correspondence overhead and vitality utilization. The exploration group proposed a misfortune versatile collection structure called abstract dissemination, which uses copy harsh calculations on top of multipath steering plans to precisely process totals (e.g., predicate tally or entirety). Be that as it may, this collection system does not address the issue of false subtotal qualities contributed by bargained hubs. This assault may bring about vast mistakes in the total figured at the base station, which is the root hub in the collection chain of command. they make the summation dispersion methodology secure against the above assault propelled by traded off hubs. Specifically, they display a calculation to empower the base station to safely process predicate includes or whole evensthe vicinity of such an assault. Total by sifting through the of bargained hubs in theaggregation hierarchy. In this paper, we present a survey of data aggregation algorithmsin wireless sensor networks. We compare different algorithms on the basis of performance measures such as security, Communication overhead and data accuracy. We conclude with possible future research directions.
Cache memories for PDP-11 family computers

This paper gives a summary of the research which led to the design of the cache memory in the DEC PDP-11/70. The concept of cache memory is introduced together with its major organizational parameters: size, associativity, block size, replacement algorithm, and write strategy. Simulation results are given showing how the performance of the cache varies with changes in these parameters. Based on these simulation results the design of the 11/70 cache is justified.