Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Alterations in immune cell phenotype and function after experimental spinal cord injury.

Traumatic injury to the spinal cord initiates a cascade of inflammatory-mediated injury and repair processes within the nervous system. In parallel, spinal injury could influence peripheral mechanisms of host defense (e.g., wound healing, antibody production) by altering lymphocyte phenotype and function. The goal of this study was to evaluate the physiological impact of spinal contusion injury on phenotypic and functional indices of lymphocyte activation. A flow cytometric time-course analysis of lymphocytes isolated from lymph node and spleen revealed an increase in CD4+ and a decrease in CD8+ lymphocytes during the first week post injury. The functional potential of lymphocytes was also evaluated based on their ability to proliferate in the presence of a biologically relevant antigen (myelin basic protein, MBP) or a lymphocyte mitogen. The data revealed increased proliferation to MBP by 3 days postinjury in lymphocytes isolated from lymph node but not spleen. By 1 week postinjury, increased proliferation to mitogen was noted in both the lymph node and the spleen suggesting a general increase in lymphocyte reactivity during this time interval. Circulating corticosterone (CORT), an endogenous glucocorticoid with significant effects on lymphocyte phenotype and function, was elevated within 24 h after spinal cord injury (SCI) and remained above control levels throughout the duration of our studies (up to 1 month postinjury). The present data suggest injury-associated changes in immune cell phenotype and function paralleled by the activation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis.
Distinct Effects of Anti-Tumor Necrosis Factor Combined Therapy on TH1/TH2 Balance in Rheumatoid Arthritis Patients

ABSTRACT The immune balance in patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA), a disease characterized by TH1 dominance, treated by the preferred combined anti-tumor necrosis factor (anti-TNF) and methotrexate (MTX) therapy was evaluated by assessing the chemokine and cytokine receptors as well as apoptosis induction. A meta-analysis of combined therapy by TNF blockers and MTX in 15 RA patients, MTX monotherapy in 20 RA patients, and 11 diagnosed but untreated RA patients was performed by assessing several immune markers in the whole lymphocyte population, as well as in specific CD4 cells, by both flow cytometry and image analysis. A significant downregulation of CXCR3 and IL-12 receptors (both TH1 markers) and a significant increase in the chemokine receptor CCR4 and, to a lesser extent, IL-4R (both TH2 markers) were found; a particularly marked increase was found in patients treated by combined therapy. This phenomenon was pronounced in CD4 cells and was accompanied by a high proportion of apoptotic cells. The therapeutic effect of MTX and TNF blockers may be due to apoptosis induction in lymphocytes infiltrating from the inflammation site and restoring the TH1/TH2 balance.
Numerical simulation of non-uniform interface charge caused by pure bias NBTI degradation in pMOSFETs

A simulation method of non-uniform interface charges in pMOSFETs was presented in this paper. By using the 2D device simulation software, it increases the non-uniform interface charges array and calculation module. Bonded with the device negative bias temperature instability NBTI (Negative Bias Temperature Instability) degeneration model, the pure bias NBTI (Pure Drain Bias NBTI) degradation impact on pMOS device threshold voltage was calculated and analyzed. The results show that the pure bias NBTI degradation is smaller than typical NBTI degradation in the beginning of a period of time of the stress, but after prolonged stress, the degradation of both is the same. In the test window, the pure bias NBTI degradation exponent changes along with the gate voltage. These methods and conclusions are helpful for the further analysis of the mechanism of pure bias NBTI degradation and related reliability issues.
The Serine/Threonine Phosphatase, PP2A: Endogenous Regulator of Inflammatory Cell Signaling1

We have investigated the regulation of kinases and phosphatases in early gene activation in monocytes because these cells are implicated in the pathogenesis of acute inflammatory states, such as sepsis and acute lung injury. One early gene up-regulated by endotoxin is c-Jun, a member of the activating protein (AP) family. C-Jun is phosphorylated by c-Jun N-terminal kinase (JNK) and associates with c-Fos to form the AP-1 transcriptional activation complex that can drive cytokine expression. Inhibition of the serine/threonine phosphatase, PP2-A, with okadaic acid resulted in a significant increase in JNK activity. This finding was associated with increased phosphorylation of c-Jun, AP-1 transcriptional activity, and IL-1β expression. Activation of PP2A inhibited JNK activity and JNK coprecipitated with the regulatory subunit, PP2A-Aα, supporting the conclusion that PP2A is a key regulator of JNK in the context of an inflammatory stimulus.
Online trajectory planning for finite-thrust autonomous rendezvous with light-of-sight constraint

This paper formulates and solves the problem of optimal rendezvous trajectory of a powered chaser and a passive target in a circular orbit. The HCW equations are derived to describe the relative motion in a close range. Then, the rendezvous problems are explicitly formulated as an online trajectory planning problem by using the proposed method. In order to consider practical constraints, the finite-thrust propulsion system are selected. Meanwhile, a light-of-sight constraint is imposed for vision-based sensing and safety considerations. Finally, simulations are implemented with different scenarios by using Matlab, and the results illustrate the method proposed is able to drive the spacecraft rendezvous with the target along the fixed docking direction safely and fuel efficiently.
Momentum in International Commodity Futures Markets

This paper examines whether commodity futures momentum can predict business cycles in the US, China, UK, Japan, and India. Momentum as a risk factor may play a role as a state variable in the spirit of Liew and Vassalou ( ). We find significant and negative predictability of commodity futures momentum, although the basis factor of the commodity futures markets shows insignificant results. Moreover, we find that commodity futures momentum is an independent factor that cannot be fully explained by traditional risk factors, macroeconomic variables, or commodity sector momentum. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 37:803–835, 2017
High frequency of lamivudine resistance mutations in Brazilian patients co‐infected with HIV and hepatitis B

This study analyzed the genotype distribution and frequency of lamivudine (LAM) and tenofovir (TDF) resistance mutations in a group of patients co‐infected with HIV and hepatitis B virus (HBV). A cross‐sectional study of 847 patients with HIV was conducted. Patients provided blood samples for HBsAg detection. The load of HBV was determined using an “in‐house” real‐time polymerase chain reaction. HBV genotypes/subgenotypes, antiviral resistance, basal core promoter (BCP), and precore mutations were detected by DNA sequencing. Twenty‐eight patients with co‐infection were identified. The distribution of HBV genotypes among these patients was A (n = 9; 50%), D (n = 4; 22.2%), G (n = 3; 16.7%), and F (n = 2; 11.1%). Eighteen patients were treated with LAM and six patients were treated with LAM plus TDF. The length of exposure to LAM and TDF varied from 4 to 216 months. LAM resistance substitutions (rtL180M + rtM204V) were detected in 10 (50%) of the 20 patients with viremia. This pattern and an accompanying rtV173L mutation was found in four patients. Three patients with the triple polymerase substitution pattern (rtV173L + rtL180M + rtM204V) had associated changes in the envelope gene (sE164D + sI195M). Mutations in the BCP region (A1762T, G1764A) and in the precore region (G1896A, G1899A) were also found. No putative TDF resistance substitution was detected. The data suggest that prolonged LAM use is associated with the emergence of particular changes in the HBV genome, including substitutions that may elicit a vaccine escape phenotype. No putative TDF resistance change was detected after prolonged use of TDF. J. Med. Virol. 82:1481–1488, 2010. © 2010 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Environment and Tourism

1. Introducing tourism 2. Perceptions of environments for tourism and ethical issues 3. Tourism's relationship with the environment 4.Tourism, the environment and economics 5. The environmental planning and management of tourism 6. Sustainability and tourism 7. The future of tourism's relationship with the environment
Right‐elevated expression of charon is regulated by fluid flow in medaka Kupffer's vesicle

Recent studies have revealed that a cilium‐generated liquid flow in the node has a crucial role in the establishment of the left‐right (LR) axis in the mouse. In fish, Kupffer's vesicle (KV), a teleost‐specific spherical organ attached to the tail region, is known to have an equivalent role to the mouse node during LR axis formation. However, at present, there has been no report of an asymmetric gene expressed in KV under the control of fluid flow. Here we report the earliest asymmetric gene in teleost KV, medaka charon, and its regulation. Charon is a member of the Cerberus/DAN family of proteins, first identified in zebrafish. Although zebrafish charon was reported to be symmetrically expressed in KV, medaka charon displays asymmetric expression with more intense expression on the right side. This asymmetric expression was found to be regulated by KV flow because symmetric and up‐regulated charon expression was observed in flow‐defective embryos with immotile cilia or disrupted KV. Taken together, medaka charon is a reliable gene marker for LR asymmetry in KV and thus, will be useful for the analysis of the early steps downstream of the fluid flow.
End-to-End Optimization of Task-Oriented Dialogue Model with Deep Reinforcement Learning

In this paper, we present a neural network based task-oriented dialogue system that can be optimized end-to-end with deep reinforcement learning (RL). The system is able to track dialogue state, interface with knowledge bases, and incorporate query results into agent's responses to successfully complete task-oriented dialogues. Dialogue policy learning is conducted with a hybrid supervised and deep RL methods. We first train the dialogue agent in a supervised manner by learning directly from task-oriented dialogue corpora, and further optimize it with deep RL during its interaction with users. In the experiments on two different dialogue task domains, our model demonstrates robust performance in tracking dialogue state and producing reasonable system responses. We show that deep RL based optimization leads to significant improvement on task success rate and reduction in dialogue length comparing to supervised training model. We further show benefits of training task-oriented dialogue model end-to-end comparing to component-wise optimization with experiment results on dialogue simulations and human evaluations.
Pregnancy planning and folic acid supplement use: results from a survey in Quebec.

BACKGROUND To decrease the risk of neural tube defects, all women planning pregnancy or capable of becoming pregnant should take folic acid supplements. The aim of the study was to describe the association between pregnancy planning and vitamin supplement use. METHODS A total of 1,858 pregnant women registered for a prenatal ultrasound examination in the Montérégie region, Province of Quebec, Canada, completed a questionnaire between November 1997 and May 1998. Pregnancy planning was described by six ordinal variables, which were included in a nonlinear principal component analysis. The main dimension representing the intensity of pregnancy planning was used as the dependent variable in a multivariate linear regression model, and as a basis for assessing vitamin use according to four levels of planning. RESULTS A majority of women scored high for intensity of pregnancy planning. Planning intensity score increased with age and was higher among women who attended university, had a family income greater than CAD $30,000, and were married. Vitamin use in the period prior to conception occurred with a frequency of 27.5%, increasing moderately with planning intensity scores. Overall, only 13.5% of fetuses were exposed to adequate doses of folic acid. CONCLUSION A promotion campaign selectively targeting women likely to plan a pregnancy could have a significant impact in reducing neural tube defect incidence.
Asymmetry in CT Scan Measures of Thigh Muscle 2 Months After Hip Fracture : The Baltimore Hip Studies

Background. Hip fracture is an important problem for older adults with significant functional consequences. After hip fracture, reduced muscle loading can result in muscle atrophy. Methods. We compared thigh muscle characteristics in the fractured leg to those in the nonfractured leg in participants from the Baltimore Hip Studies 7th cohort using computed tomography scan imaging. Results. At 2 months postfracture, a single 10 mm axial computed tomography scan was obtained at the midthigh level in 43 participants (23 men, 20 women) with a mean age of 79.9 years (range: 65–96 years), and thigh muscle cross-sectional area, cross-sectional area of intermuscular adipose tissue, and mean radiologic attenuation were measured. Total thigh muscle cross-sectional area was less on the side of the fracture by 9.46 cm2 (95% CI: 5.97 cm2, 12.95 cm2) while the crosssectional area of intermuscular adipose tissue was greater by 2.97 cm2 (95% CI: 1.94 cm2, 4.01 cm2) on the fractured side. Mean muscle attenuation was lower on the side of the fracture by 3.66 Hounsfield Units (95% CI: 2.98 Hounsfield Units, 4.34 Hounsfield Units). Conclusions. The observed asymmetry is consistent with the effect of disuse and inflammation in the affected limb along with training effects in the unaffected limb due to the favoring of this leg with ambulation during the postfracture period.
Factors Associated with Bleeding and Thrombosis in Children Receiving Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation

Rationale: Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) is used for respiratory and cardiac failure in children but is complicated by bleeding and thrombosis. Objectives: (1) To measure the incidence of bleeding (blood loss requiring transfusion or intracranial hemorrhage) and thrombosis during ECMO support; (2) to identify factors associated with these complications; and (3) to determine the impact of these complications on patient outcome. Methods: This was a prospective, observational cohort study in pediatric, cardiac, and neonatal intensive care units in eight hospitals, carried out from December 2012 to September 2014. Measurements and Main Results: ECMO was used on 514 consecutive patients under age 19 years. Demographics, anticoagulation practices, severity of illness, circuitry components, bleeding, thrombotic events, and outcome were recorded. Survival was 54.9%. Bleeding occurred in 70.2%, including intracranial hemorrhage in 16%, and was independently associated with higher daily risk of mortality. Circuit component changes were required in 31.1%, and patient‐related clots occurred in 12.8%. Laboratory sampling contributed to transfusion requirement in 56.6%, and was the sole reason for at least one transfusion in 42.2% of patients. Pump type was not associated with bleeding, thrombosis, hemolysis, or mortality. Hemolysis was predictive of subsequent thrombotic events. Neither hemolysis nor thrombotic events increased the risk of mortality. Conclusions: The incidences of bleeding and thrombosis are high during ECMO support. Laboratory sampling is a major contributor to transfusion during ECMO. Strategies to reduce the daily risk of bleeding and thrombosis, and different thresholds for transfusion, may be appropriate subjects of future trials to improve outcomes of children requiring this supportive therapy.
Database intrusion detection system for detecting malicious behaviors in transaction and inter-transaction levels

Database management systems containing the most valuable assets of enterprises, i.e., data. Ordinary intrusion detection systems usually deal with network or OS attacks and could not detect database specific attacks. Therefore, the existence of Intrusion Detection Systems in the database is a necessity. In this paper, we propose a type of intrusion detection system for detecting attacks in both database transaction level and inter-transaction level (user task level). For this purpose, we propose a detection method at transaction level, which is based on describing the expected transactions within the database applications. Then at inter-transaction level, we propose a detection method that is based on anomaly detection and uses data mining to find temporal patterns and rules. The advantage of this system compared to the previous database intrusion detection systems is that it can detect malicious behaviors in both transaction and inter-transaction levels using a hybrid approach, including specification-based detection and anomaly detection. In order to evaluate the accuracy of the proposed system, some experiments have been done. The experimental evaluation results show high accuracy and effectiveness of the proposed system.
Assessing the comparative performance of competition authorities

Finding an effective way of assessing the performance of a competition authority is an objective that recently has been widely debated by academics and practitioners. Although several methods of evaluation exist, the issue that still remains unsolved is how the assessment could be done systematically. This thesis consists of one descriptive, and four substantive chapters, the substantive chapters (3-6) includes one theoretical and three empirical, all centred on the assessment of competition law and policy enforcement. The first empirical chapter (3) studies the determinants of the reputation of a competition authority (used as a proxy for performance). In the theoretical chapter (4), a model is developed to understand how an age profile of the number of cartels detected by a competition authority can reflect the combined effects of increasing detection efficiency and greater success of deterrence over time. The second empirical chapter (5) builds on the theoretical model and studies the age profile of cartel cases detected across time and between different competition authorities. Finally, the last chapter (6) empirically examines the possible interactions between the different types of competition cases (mergers, cartels, abuse) in the presence of a competition authority which is budget constrained, and therefore must choose how to allocate its resources between these different areas.
Region‐specific activation of microglial cells in the rat septal complex following fimbria‐fornix transection

Studies of postlesional microglial activation may gain insight into microglia/neuronal interactions in processes of neurodegeneration. We compared the microglial response after axotomy of septohippocampal projection neurons with that seen after selective immunolesioning of cholinergic septohippocampal neurons with the immunotoxin 192 IgG‐saporin. Using the microglial marker isolectin B4 from Griffonia simplicifolia (GSA I‐B4), we found striking differences in the microglial response between these two lesion paradigms. Following axotomy of septohippocampal neurons by fimbria‐fornix transection (ff‐t), there was only a moderate and short‐lasting microglial reaction in the medial septum (MS) in the early postlesion period. Prelabeling of septohippocampal neurons with Fluoro‐Gold (FG) prior to axotomy revealed the survival of most neurons, and only very rarely were microglial cells observed that had phagocytosed FG‐labeled debris. In the lateral septum (LS) containing the degenerating terminals of hippocamposeptal fibers transected by ff‐t, a heavy reaction of lectin‐labeled activated microglial cells associated with high phagocytotic activity was noticed. Unexpectedly, after a long survival time (6 months) following ff‐t, we observed an increase in microglial GSA I‐B4 labeling in the MS. In contrast, an inverse pattern of the microglial response, i.e., a strong initial reaction in the MS and very little microglial activation in the LS, was observed after immunolesioning. Our results indicate that the microglial reaction in the MS following ff‐t differs substantially from that seen in other models of axotomy. J. Comp. Neurol. 390:481–496, 1998. © 1998 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
FlowerNet: A Gene Expression Correlation Network for Anther and Pollen Development1[OPEN]

A network model of global transcriptional interactions, based on clustering of transcriptionally correlated genes using publicly available floral gene expression data sets, provides a community resource for studies of reproductive gene expression. Floral formation, in particular anther and pollen development, is a complex biological process with critical importance for seed set and for targeted plant breeding. Many key transcription factors regulating this process have been identified; however, their direct role remains largely unknown. Using publicly available gene expression data from Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana), focusing on those studies that analyze stamen-, pollen-, or flower-specific expression, we generated a network model of the global transcriptional interactions (FlowerNet). FlowerNet highlights clusters of genes that are transcriptionally coregulated and therefore likely to have interacting roles. Focusing on four clusters, and using a number of data sets not included in the generation of FlowerNet, we show that there is a close correlation in how the genes are expressed across a variety of conditions, including male-sterile mutants. This highlights the important role that FlowerNet can play in identifying new players in anther and pollen development. However, due to the use of general floral expression data in FlowerNet, it also has broad application in the characterization of genes associated with all aspects of floral development and reproduction. To aid the dissection of genes of interest, we have made FlowerNet available as a community resource (http://www.cpib.ac.uk/anther). For this resource, we also have generated plots showing anther/flower expression from a variety of experiments: These are normalized together where possible to allow further dissection of the resource.