Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Human CD8+ CD57- TEMRA cells: Too young to be called "old"

End-stage differentiation of antigen-specific T-cells may precede loss of immune responses against e.g. viral infections after allogeneic stem cell transplantation (SCT). Antigen-specific CD8+ T-cells detected by HLA/peptide multimers largely comprise CD45RA-/CCR7- effector memory (TEM) and CD45RA+/CCR7- TEMRA subsets. A majority of terminally differentiated T-cells is considered to be part of the heterogeneous TEMRA subset. The senescence marker CD57 has been functionally described in memory T-cells mainly composed of central memory (TCM) and TEM cells. However, its role specifically in TEMRA cells remained undefined. Here, we investigated the relevance of CD57 to separate human CD8+ TEMRA cells into functionally distinct subsets. CD57- CD8+ TEMRA cells isolated from healthy donors had considerably longer telomeres and showed significantly more BrdU uptake and IFN-γ release upon stimulation compared to the CD57+ counterpart. Cytomegalovirus (CMV) specific T-cells isolated from patients after allogeneic SCT were purified into CD57+ and CD57- TEMRA subsets. CMV specific CD57- TEMRA cells had longer telomeres and a considerably higher CMV peptide sensitivity in BrdU uptake and IFN-γ release assays compared to CD57+ TEMRA cells. In contrast, CD57+ and CD57- TEMRA cells showed comparable peptide specific cytotoxicity. Finally, CD57- CD8+ TEMRA cells partially changed phenotypically into TEM cells and gained CD57 expression, while CD57+ CD8+ TEMRA cells hardly changed phenotypically and showed considerable cell death after in vitro stimulation. To the best of our knowledge, these data show for the first time that CD57 separates CD8+ TEMRA cells into a terminally differentiated CD57+ population and a so far functionally undescribed “young” CD57- TEMRA subset with high proliferative capacity and differentiation plasticity.
Black Feminists and Du Bois: Respectability, Protection, and Beyond

Throughout his life, W.E. B. Du Bois was an advocate for black women. However, in his article of 1898, "The Study of the Negro Problems," he posits a model of the intellectuals, the investigators who analyze Negro problems, as male. In other writings, the most important being "The Damnation of Women," Du Bois focuses his attention on black women as mothers, workers, and activists but not as intellectuals. This is why contemporary black feminist intellectuals continue to claim him as an important ancestor even as they critique some of his failures around gender. The author's research attempts to enhance and extend the intellectual agendas Du Bois set in motion by being attentive to both gender and race.
What’s Going On?

For a crisis to be effectively governed, it must first be noticed, interpreted, understood and assessed. This chapter explores how policymakers ‘made sense’ of the emerging COVID-19 pandemic. We focus on: (1) how policymakers around the world detected the developing threat as it emerged first in China and then in Italy; (2) the prominent involvement of scientific expertise in government sense-making processes (and in narratives about those processes). We discuss the complex dynamics between experts, decision-makers and publics that ensued.
Mood and Performance Anxiety in High School Basketball Players: A Pilot Study

Participation in competitive sport may impact psychological measures, such as mood and performance anxiety, which in turn may impact enjoyment, adherence, continued participation, and so on. This study assessed the feasibility – in terms of process, resources, management, and potential scientific value– of measuring the effect of varying competitive challenges upon the mood and performance anxiety measures of high school athletes. The participants (n=12) consisted of the boys’ varsity basketball team at a high school in a rural Midwestern community. Participants completed the Profile of Mood States (POMS) to assess mood and the Sport Anxiety Scale-2 (SAS-2) to assess performance anxiety, respectively. Survey administration occurred at baseline and prior to games designated as non-conference, conference, and state tournament. A-priori feasibility measures were achieved in this prospective design. Significant correlations on the subscale measures were found on the POMS and SAS-2 administered before the four conditions in this study; Chronbach’s alpha ranged from 0.54–0.94 across conditions for POMS subscales, and Chronbach’s alpha ranged from 0.73–0.97 across all conditions for SAS-2 subscales, respectively. Significant differences were found across conditions in the POMS subscale confusion [F(3,33) = 5.71, p = 0.01] and in the SAS-2 subscale worry [F(3,33) = 6.13, p=0.01]. These preliminary findings suggest that the competitive conditions in this study significantly affected some measures of mood and performance anxiety in high school basketball players. These findings warrant further investigation, as well as suggest coaches could gather such information from their players, ultimately aiding in player development and team performance.
Predicting global gene expression from chromatin accessibility in the developing mammalian forebrain

New technologies for probing the epigenome provide unparalleled opportunities to ask how epigenetics regulates gene expression. Here we ask whether these new technologies, paired with machine learning approaches, can predict gene expression in the mammalian forebrain. We use publicly available RNA-seq, ChIP-seq, and the newly developed ATAC-seq datasets from mouse embryonic forebrains to curate a collection of features and corresponding gene expression levels. We then apply a series of machine learning techniques to predict gene expression using only epigenetic marks, starting with logistic regression and Support Vector Machines (SVM), performing feature extraction using Random Forest, and finally applying neural networks to the dataset. We find that by bifurcating the data into ‘high’ and ‘low’ expression levels, we can classify gene expression levels with 81.8% accuracy. Additionally, using Random Forest classification, we find that the newly developed approach of ATAC-seq is the single most important epigenetic feature in predicting gene expression, and neural networks perform robustly but with surprisingly low accuracy compared to SVMs despite changes to network topology and implementation of
Tourists' Consumption and Interpretation of Sport Event Imagery

In an era when popular and mass cultures are positioned further up the symbolic hierarchy, sport events are deemed by cities to be valuable image or branding tools. Event strategies are often justified by their envisaged image effects and the celebrities, iconic structures, and media exposure associated with sport events means that they are viewed as being particularly effective for this purpose. This paper evaluates the image effects of strategies deployed by three English cities: Birmingham, Manchester, and Sheffield. Each of these cities has used a combination of regular sport fixtures, ‘mega’ sport events, and event bids to further their reputations as tourist destinations. Semi-structured interviews with a representative sample of potential tourists were used to provide evidence of the impacts of these initiatives. Despite some participants making connections with traffic chaos and violence, in general sport events appear to have encouraged positive connotations amongst potential tourists, including modernity, progress, and vitality. Events seem to be regarded favourably at a cultural level, generating widespread positive meanings even when individual preferences vary. This has positive implications for cities deploying sport events as re-imaging or branding tools.
Mapping the distribution of Well-Being in Europe beyond national borders

Well-being is a difficult concept to define and even harder to measure. The first part of this report reviews and provides a synthesis of the vast amount of literature that exists on the concept of well-being. Two main broad approaches to well-being are considered the subjective and the objective approaches. For each of these, the main definitions, the most important theoretical perspectives and the most relevant metrics and quantifications are reported. The most recent well-being approach, which integrates the objective and subjective approaches, is also presented in order to give an overview of the future directions of investigations into well-being. The second part of the report provides an integrated description of well-being across Europe. By evaluating multiple criteria, and by considering the twelve economic, social, environmental and health indicators developed by Eurostat for the 266 NUTS 2 regions, a study on regional well-being is provided for the year 2009.
The research on information filtering model based on immune self-learning mechanism

We designed a kind of new information filtering model based on biological immune system. In this model, the original information is as antigen, and the strategy of filtering and procedure is as antibody. Antibody could learn and evolve continuously. The model has abilities of learning, storage and evolution, and it could learn and synergy automatically, adjust services, to complete complicated tasks with high efficiency. At last, the simulation experiment proved that the model has high efficiency and accuracy.
Providing partner support in good times and bad: Providers’ outcomes

Past work has often examined outcomes associated with receiving support for the support recipient, but less work has focused on the impact that providing support has on the support provider. In this study, we examined the impact of providing responsive support (i.e. support that communicates understanding, validation, and caring) on the support provider. In a 10-day daily experience study, 78 romantic partners (39 couples) reported once a day on their responses to their partners’ positive and negative event disclosures. Specifically, participants reported on whether their partner talked about an event and the intended responsiveness of their response, and completed several daily personal and relationship well-being measures (relationship satisfaction, life satisfaction, vitality, and anxiety). Analyses revealed that providing responsive support for positive event disclosures was associated with benefits for the support provider, including higher daily relationship and life satisfaction, and vitality. In contrast, providing responsive support for negative event disclosures was associated with lower levels of daily well-being (less relationship satisfaction, greater anxiety). However, being someone who typically provides responsive support for negative events was still optimal over the course of the study. Results are discussed in terms of the immediate and longer-term differences between being responsive to positive event disclosures (i.e. capitalization) and negative event disclosures (i.e. traditional social support).
SIK inhibition in human myeloid cells modulates TLR and IL‐1R signaling and induces an anti‐inflammatory phenotype

Macrophage polarization into a phenotype producing high levels of anti‐inflammatory IL‐10 and low levels of proinflammatory IL‐12 and TNF‐α cytokines plays a pivotal role in the resolution of inflammation. Salt‐inducible kinases synergize with TLR signaling to restrict the formation of these macrophages. The expression and function of salt‐inducible kinase in primary human myeloid cells are poorly characterized. Here, we demonstrated that the differentiation from peripheral blood monocytes to macrophages or dendritic cells induced a marked up‐regulation of salt‐inducible kinase protein expression. With the use of 2 structurally unrelated, selective salt‐inducible kinase inhibitors, HG‐9‐91‐01 and ARN‐3236, we showed that salt‐inducible kinase inhibition significantly decreased proinflammatory cytokines (TNF‐α, IL‐6, IL‐1β, and IL‐12p40) and increased IL‐10 secretion by human myeloid cells stimulated with TLR2 and‐4 agonists. Differently than in mouse cells, salt‐inducible kinase inhibition did not enhance IL‐1Ra production in human macrophages. Salt‐inducible kinase inhibition blocked several markers of proinflammatory (LPS + IFN‐γ)‐polarized macrophages [M(LPS + IFN‐γ)] and induced a phenotype characterized by low TNF‐α/IL‐6/IL‐12p70 and high IL‐10. The downstream effects observed with salt‐inducible kinase inhibitors on cytokine modulation correlated with direct salt‐inducible kinase target (CREB‐regulated transcription coactivator 3 and histone deacetylase 4) dephosphorylation in these cells. More importantly, we showed for the first time that salt‐inducible kinase inhibition decreases proinflammatory cytokines in human myeloid cells upon IL‐1R stimulation. Altogether, our results expand the potential therapeutic use of salt‐inducible kinase inhibitors in immune‐mediated inflammatory diseases.
Infinite-Horizon Model Predictive Control for Periodic Tasks with Contacts

We present a method that combines offline trajectory optimization and online Model Predictive Control (MPC), generating robust controllers for complex periodic behavior in domains with unilateral constraints (e.g., contact with the environment). MPC offers robust and adaptive control even in high-dimensional domains; however, the online optimization gets stuck in local minima when the domains has discontinuous dynamics. Some methods of trajectory optimization that are immune to such problems, but these are often too slow to be applied online. In this paper, we use offline optimization to find the limit-cycle solution of an infinite-horizon average-cost optimal-control task. We then compute a local quadratic approximation of the Value function around this limit cycle. Finally, we use this quadratic approximation as the terminal cost of an online MPC. This combination of an offline solution of the infinite-horizon problem with an online MPC controller is known as Infinite Horizon Model Predictive Control (IHMPC), and has previously been applied only to simple stabilization objectives. Here we extend IHMPC to tackle periodic tasks, and demonstrate the power of our approach by synthesizing hopping behavior in a simulated robot. IHMPC involves a limited computational load, and can be executed online on a standard laptop computer. The resulting behavior is extremely robust, allowing the hopper to recover from virtually any perturbation. In real robotic domains, modeling errors are inevitable. We show how IHMPC is robust to modeling errors by altering the morphology of the robot; the same controller remains effective, even when the underlying infinite-horizon solution is no longer accurate.
A Survey on Different Classifier in Speech Recognition Techniques.

Speech Emotion Recognition is one of the most recent topic in the Human Computer Interaction field. Now a day's natural communication plays an important role in our daily life, so in natural communication interface between human and computer, a computer have become integral part of our lives. For improving the interaction between human and computer currently work is going on.To accomplish this goal, a computer would have to be capable of differentiate its present situation and act in response differently depending on that observation. Some part of this process involves understanding a user's emotional state. (2) To make human computer interaction more natural, computer should be able to recognize the emotional states same as that human does. For getting efficient system. The System depends on classifiers and type of feature extracted which are used for detection of Emotion. Most of the system's basic objective is to detect the emotions like anger, happy, neutral, sadness. Selection of a good database is also important task.While classifying Emotional states MFCC and Energy is used for feature extraction .
Actor-critic reinforcement learning for tracking control in robotics

In this article we provide experimental results and evaluation of a compensation method which improves the tracking performance of a nominal feedback controller by means of reinforcement learning (RL). The compensator is based on the actor-critic scheme and it adds a correction signal to the nominal control input with the goal to improve the tracking performance using on-line learning. The algorithm has been evaluated on a 6 DOF industrial robot manipulator with the objective to accurately track different types of reference trajectories. An extensive experimental study has shown that the proposed RL-based compensation method significantly improves the performance of the nominal feedback controller.
Cellular MRI contrast via coexpression of transferrin receptor and ferritin

Recently there has been growing interest in the development and use of iron‐based contrast agents for cellular imaging with MRI. In this study we investigated coexpression of the transferrin receptor and ferritin genes to induce cellular contrast in a biological system. Expression of transgenic human transferrin receptor and human ferritin H‐subunit was induced in a stably transfected mouse neural stem cell line. When grown in iron‐rich medium, the transgenic cells accumulated significantly more iron than control cells, with a trend toward an increase in reactive oxygen species, but no detrimental effects on cell viability. This cellular iron significantly increased the transverse relaxivities, R2 and R 2* , at 1.5 T and 7 T. By comparing measurements in the same cell samples at 1.5 T and 7 T, we confirmed the expected increase in relaxivity with increasing field strength. Finally, supplemented transgenic cells transplanted into mouse brain demonstrated increased contrast with surrounding neural tissue on T 2* ‐weighted MR brain images compared to controls. These results indicate that dual expression of proteins at different critical points in the iron metabolism pathway may improve cellular contrast without compromising cell viability. Magn Reson Med, 2006. © 2006 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
On the Power of Quantum Multi-Prover Interactive Proof Systems

In this paper we introduce a quantum analogue of multi-prover interactive proof systems by naturally extending the model of single-prover quantum interactive proof systems defined by Watrous. It is proved that the class of languages that have quantum multi-prover interactive proof systems equals to NEXP, which follows that the quantum analogue has no gain to the classical counterpart in the setting of multi-prover interactive proof systems. It is also proved that, in cases the prover does not have his private qubits, the class of languages that have single-prover quantum interactive proof systems equals to NEXP.
Phantom and animal tissues for modelling the electrical properties of human liver

The dielectric properties of human liver were characterized over the frequency range of 0.3-3 GHz for freshly excised tissue samples of primary hepatocellular carcinoma, metastatic colorectal carcinoma, and normal liver tissues resected from the tumour margin. On average, the dielectric constant (^9; r ) of freshly excised human liver tumour was 12% higher than that of surrounding normal liver, and the electrical conductivity (`3;) of tumour was 24% higher. In order to establish suitable tissue models for human liver, the electrical properties were compared to measurements of homogenous phantom mixtures, in vitro bovine liver, and in vivo canine and porcine liver tissues. The data demonstrate that there are several animal tissues that can be used to model the average dielectric properties of human liver reasonably accurately, and use of the most readily available bovine liver appears well-justified, even when stored for up to 10 days in a refrigerator. Additionally, the dielectric properties of in vitro liver remained stable over a large temperature range, with `3; rising only 1.1%/°C in porcine liver (15-37°C) and 2.0%/°C in bovine liver (10-90°C), and ^9; r decreasing Ͱ4;0.2%/°C in both tissues. This effort identifies homogeneous solid and liquid phantom models and several heterogeneous in vitro tissues that adequately model the dielectric properties of human liver tumours for use in quantitative studies of microwave power deposition in liver.
Development of a Public Service Motivation Measurement Scale: Corroborating and Extending Perry's Measurement Instrument

ABSTRACT Despite the existence of multiple measurement instruments, measuring public service motivation still generates controversy. The most common cited measurement issues are the application of the measurement scale outside the United States, the dimensionality of public service motivation and the length of the original measurement scale. This article discusses these issues and evaluates a measurement instrument developed in a non-US environment, based upon empirical data. Although differences in items are noted, the factorial structure of the original measurement instrument remains in place. Nevertheless, there is some evidence that an additional dimension, “democratic governance” could supplement the other existing measurement instruments.
When Homogeneous becomes Heterogeneous Wearout Aware Task Scheduling for Streaming Applications

Recent trends in process technology suggest the need to monitor transistor wear-out in future processes. Because of withindie variation and the different computations being run on each core in a multi-core chip, this wear-out causes further imbalance to initial core frequencies as time progresses. Furthermore, manufacturing defects mean that cache sizes can vary between cores, adding further imbalance to a system. If we allow different cores to independently control their operating frequency we can achieve the best possible performance for their part of the die. Other parts of the system with slowly degrading performance can include interconnects and Flash-based file caches. In this paper we first explain how conventionally homogeneous multi-core processors can become heterogeneous over time. We discuss possible operating system based solutions to maximize the performance of a system as it wears out and present illustrative theoretical results based on linear programming. We demonstrate that for a class of streaming applications, an intelligent scheduling scheme recovers a significant amount of performance lost through wear-out. We advocate the need for multiple accurate performance measurements for effective scheduling in a wearout-aware multicore chip.
An adaptive irregular grid approach for 3D deformable image registration

Deformable registration is an important application in medical image analysis and processing. We propose a physics-based parametric approach for deformable image registration, where non-rigid transformations are computed using an irregular grid of control points distributed within the image domain. The image is modelled as a three-dimensional (3D) homogeneous infinite elastic medium. It is assumed that a Gaussian-shaped force is applied at every control point, where the strengths, directions and influence areas of the forces as well as the positions of the control points are considered as free parameters whose optimization leads to maximization of the similarity measure between the images to be registered. For optimization, a computationally efficient Levenberg–Marquardt method is used. The proposed approach has certain advantages over traditional landmark-based methods or the registration methods based on regular grids, for example B-splines, since comparable results can be achieved by using less control points. Experimental results with 3D clinical images demonstrate that our method is capable of successfully coping with complex registration tasks.