Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Galactosyl ceramide (or a closely related molecule) is the receptor for human immunodeficiency virus type 1 on human colon epithelial HT29 cells

The gastrointestinal tract is considered to be a major route of infection for human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). Infection of human colon epithelial cells by HIV is not blocked by anti-CD4 antibodies known to block infection of lymphoid cells (J. Fantini, N. Yahi, and J. C. Chermann, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 88:9297-9301, 1991), suggesting the presence of an alternate receptor for HIV on these cells. In this report, we show that (i) a monoclonal antibody specifically directed against galactosyl ceramide inhibited the infection of HT29 cells by two markedly different strains of HIV-1, as assessed by polymerase chain reaction amplification and reverse transcriptase assay; (ii) this antibody strongly labeled the surface of HT29 cells by immunofluorescence and electron microscopic immunolocalization; (iii) the labeling was preferentially but not totally restricted to the basolateral membrane domain of differentiated colonic cells, in agreement with the ability of HIV to infect both the apical and basolateral surfaces of these epithelial cells; and (iv) in thin-layer chromatography-immunostaining experiments with neutral glycolipids prepared from HT29 cells, the antibody specifically reacted with a ceramide monoglycoside fraction corresponding to galactosyl ceramide. We did not detect this glycolipid in lymphoid cells, and anti-galactosyl ceramide antibodies consistently failed to inhibit HIV infection of these cells. These data suggest that galactosyl ceramide (or a derivative) is an essential component of the receptor for HIV on the surface of HT29 cells.
Benchmarking Speech Understanding in Service Robotics

Speech understanding is a fundamental feature for many applications focused on human-robot interaction. Although many techniques and several services for speech recognition and natural language understanding have been developed in the last years, specific implementation and validation on domestic service robots have not been performed. In this paper, we describe the implementation and the results of a functional benchmark for speech understanding in service robotics that has been developed and tested in the context of different robot competitions: RoboCup@Home, RoCKIn@Home and within the European Robotics League on Service Robots. Different approaches used by the teams in the competitions are presented and the evaluation results obtained in the competitions are discussed.
Configuring BGP to Block Denial-of-Service Attacks

This document describes an operational technique that uses BGP communities to remotely trigger black-holing of a particular destination network to block denial-of-service attacks. Black-holing can be applied on a selection of routers rather than all BGP-speaking routers in the network. The document also describes a sinkhole tunnel technique using BGP communities and tunnels to pull traffic into a sinkhole router for analysis. This memo provides information for the Internet community.
Effects of childhood socio-economic conditions on educational differences in leisure-time physical activity.

BACKGROUND Our purpose was to assess the direct and indirect contribution of childhood socio-economic conditions to educational differences in leisure-time physical activity among women and men. METHODS Population-based data were derived from a representative sample of Finns aged >or=30 years (N = 7112) as part of Health 2000 Survey. Multinomial logistic regression analysis was applied. Leisure-time physical activity was divided into inactivity, moderate and high activity. RESULTS Childhood socio-economic conditions had both a direct and indirect effect through adulthood socio-economic conditions on educational differences in leisure-time physical activity. The direct effect of childhood socio-economic conditions on educational differences in inactivity was stronger than its indirect effects through adulthood socio-economic conditions and other health behaviours and related factors. Adulthood socio-economic conditions had a considerable indirect effect on educational differences in leisure-time physical activity through other adulthood health behaviours and related factors among men. CONCLUSIONS In order to narrow educational differences in leisure-time physical activity, we should secure a childhood environment that enables a physically active lifestyle, support leisure-time physical activity in diverse occupational groups, guarantee equal physical activity possibilities across different educational careers and support those with insufficient material resources.
Comparison of Tympanic and Oral Temperatures In Surgical Patients

The purpose of this study was to compare tympanic and oral temperatures at four times during the perioperative period in 60 adults having major abdominal surgery. Tympanic temperature was measured with an infrared thermometer and oral temperature with a predictive thermistor thermometer. Measurements at the two sites were similar in pattern and moderately well correlated. Tympanic temperature was somewhat more sensitive to the effects of an intervention influencing body temperature. The tympanic-oral temperature offset was relatively stable over time, with tympanic readings having a smaller range of values at each measurement. Tympanic temperature measurement variation was fairly small, with 92% of readings reproducible within 0.5°F (0.3°C); comparable oral data were not available. The findings suggest that the tympanic site offers some advantage, but that either tympanic or oral readings would, be satisfactory for routine intermittent monitoring of body temperature during the perioperative period.
Paternity frequency and maternity of males in some stingless bee species

In monogynous hymenopteran societies, the number of mates of a queen strongly influences the potential for conflict between workers and queens over the maternity of males. Queens always ‘prefer’ their own sons to sons of workers, regardless of queen mating frequency. When a queen mates once, workers are more closely related to, and therefore are expected to prefer, their own sons and then sons of sisters to sons of the queen. However, if effective paternity frequency exceeds 2, workers on average should prefer queen‐produced males to males produced by their sisters. We studied the queen mating frequency of seven stingless bee species: the Mexican species Scaptotrigona mexicana, S. pectoralis and the Australian species Austroplebeia symei, Trigona clypearis, T. hockingsi, T. mellipes and T. sapiens. We then determined whether males arise from eggs laid by workers or queens in A. symei, T. clypearis, T. hockingsi and T. mellipes. We show that all seven species investigated are most likely singly mated and that the queen dominates reproduction. This indicates that the queen's mating frequency alone does not determine whether workers or the queen produces the males.
Ferrocarriles y crecimiento económico: el caso de la Costa Rica Railway Company, 1871-1905

Este articulo analiza las diferencias entre las actividades de construccion y produccion de servicios en la historia del Ferrocarril al Atlantico de Costa Rica para de esta manera establecer el grado de incidencia de la expansion de los servicios sobre el crecimiento economico de Costa Rica. El Metodo usado para lograr esto fue un simple analisis de indicadores operacionales. El articulo sugiere que, en el periodo bajo estudio, el crecimiento economico del pais estuvo intimamente ligado a los criterios de eficiencia que la Costa Rica Railway Co. manejara; porque tales criterios de eficiencia implicaron una concepcion del beneficio que necesariamente exigia la puesta en practica de instrumentos institucionales que solo podian atentar a la larga contra el desarrollo integral del pais.
The Status of Low-Income Families in the Post-Welfare Reform Environment

Abstract Low-income families face an enormous burden to achieve economic security since the deterioration of a guaranteed safety net. Health insurance coverage is uneven, affordable childcare falls short of demand, and wage earnings insufficiently support family needs. This analysis focuses on recent trends in family formation, the impact of policy changes on families of color and of immigrant status, and explores the daily challenges and coping strategies low-income families use to survive despite insufficient resources. Four key findings emerge from this body of knowledge: (1) Low-income families experience severe hardships when relying on cash assistance, work, or a combination of both; (2) Low-income families are resilient and resourceful; (3) Low-income families face significant barriers to using public and private services along with increasing earnings from work; and (4) The quality of life for families of color and immigrant families is directly affected by employment and service sector practices. Future research needs to focus on identifying the critical unmet needs of low-income families.
Nitric Oxide‐Independent Down‐Regulation of Soluble Guanylyl Cyclase by Bacterial Endotoxin in Astroglial Cells

Induction of nitric oxide (NO) synthase (NOS) type 2 (NOS-2) in glial cells after exposure to bacterial endotoxin [lipopolysaccharide (LPS)] or inflammatory cytokines has been repeatedly demonstrated both in vitro and in vivo. However, little is known about effects of these agents on NO-dependent cyclic GMP (cGMP) formation. In this work, we show that treatment of rat cerebellar astrocyte-enriched primary cultures with LPS decreases NO donor-stimulated cGMP formation with a similar initial time course (up to 9-12 h) and concentration dependency (0.1-1 ng/ml) as for induction of NOS-2. This effect appears to be due to a down-regulation of soluble guanylyl cyclase (sGC) because LPS treatment decreases sGC activity and sGC beta1 subunit levels. In contrast, cGMP phosphodiesterase activity and stimulation of the particulate guanylyl cyclase by atrial natriuretic peptide are not affected. Incubation of astroglial cultures with a transcription inhibitor (actinomycin D) or a protein synthesis inhibitor (cycloheximide) for 18-20 h does not decrease sGC activity but totally prevents LPS-induced desensitization of sGC. Inhibition of NOS-2 activity with N(G)-monomethyl-L-arginine or inhibition of NOS-2 induction with the synthetic glucocorticoid dexamethasone failed to prevent the inhibitory effect of LPS on sGC, indicating that NO production is not involved. Moreover, after removal of LPS the time for recovery of sGC responsiveness is much longer than that for NOS-2 return to basal levels. LPS impairment of cGMP formation also occurs in cortical astrocytes but not in cerebellar granule neurons. The decreased responsiveness of sGC to NO stimulation following LPS challenge may prevent inappropriate astroglial cGMP signaling caused by excess production of NO by adjacent activated glial cells. Key Words: Astroglia-Neurons-Nitric oxide-Soluble guanylyl cyclase-Lipopolysaccharide.
Attacks and Improvement of an Efficient Remote Mutual Authentication and Key Agreement Scheme

Abstract In 2006, Shieh et al. proposed an efficient remote mutual authentication and key agreement scheme which uses smart cards and requires only hash function operations. In this paper, we show that Shieh et al.'s scheme is vulnerable to guessing attacks, forgery attacks and key compromise attacks. To eliminate these weaknesses, an improvement of Shieh et al.'s scheme with increased security is proposed. The security and efficiency of the improved scheme raises the attractiveness for implementation.
Gnome trader: a location-based augmented reality trading game

We explore a location-based game concept that encourages real-world interactions and gamifies daily commuting activities. Enhanced with augmented reality technology, we create an immersive, pervasive trading game called Gnome Trader, where the player engages with the game by physically traveling to predefined locations in the city and trading resources with virtual gnomes. As the virtual market is a crucial component of the game, we take special care to analyze various economic game mechanics. We explore the parameter space of different economic models using a simulation of the virtual economy. We evaluate the overall gameplay as well as the technical functionality through several play tests.
DNA replication of histone gene repeats in Drosophila melanogaster tissue culture cells: multiple initiation sites and replication pause sites

We showed previously that DNA replication initiates at multiple sites in the 5-kb histone gene repeating unit in early embryos of Drosophila melanogaster. The present report shows evidence that replication in the same chromosomal region initiates at multiple sites in tissue culture cells as well. First, we analyzed replication intermediates by the two-dimensional gel electrophoretic replicon mapping method and detected bubble-form replication intermediates for all fragments restricted at different sites in the repeating unit. Second, we analyzed bromodeoxyuridine-labeled nascent strands amplified by the polymerase chain reaction method and detected little differences in the size distribution of nascent strands specific to six short segments located at different sites in the repeating unit. These results strongly suggest that DNA replication initiates at multiple sites located within the repeating unit. We also found several replication pause sites located at 5' upstream regions of some histone genes.
Pinning a Complex Delayed Dynamical Network to a Homogenous Trajectory

Time delay exists in many fields, such as biology, neural network, mechanics, ecology, and so on. It is important for us to investigate the control of interconnected time-delay systems. In this brief, we propose two schemes to pin a complex delayed dynamical network to a homogenous trajectory. In particular, we prove that the delayed dynamical network is asymptotically synchronized with linear feedback control, and it is exponentially asymptotically synchronized with adaptive feedback controllers. We also find that the number of pinned nodes satisfies an inequality for synchronization. Additionally, the coupling matrix is not necessarily symmetric, and the pinned nodes can randomly be selected. Moreover, the linear feedback gain need not be large. Finally, two well-known network models are provided as illustrative examples to confirm the effectiveness of the technique.
Audiologic Findings in Patients with a Point Mutation at Nucleotide 3,243 of Mitochondrial Dna

A mitochondrial tRNALeu(UUR) mutation at nucleotide 3,243 is known to be found in most patients with MELAS (mitochondrial myopathy, encephalopathy, lactic acidosis, and strokelike episodes) and has also been identified in several families with maternally inherited diabetes mellitus and hearing loss. We report here audiologic features in patients with hearing loss associated with the mutation. Four patients without and five with MELAS were studied. Most of the patients had bilateral progressive sensorineural hearing loss. The most common shape of the audiogram was sloping, while cases in the advanced stages had flat audiograms. Speech discrimination scores were generally poor and did not parallel the degree of hearing loss. The present study suggests that the lesion for hearing loss could include both cochlear and retrocochlear involvement, but does not demonstrate a significant difference in the audiologic findings between patients with and without MELAS.
Alternative approach of constructing a digital underwater communication system with negative SNR as well as higher security

Underwater noise and fading characteristics are known to exhibit the denser ever reported noise environment that prevents the transmission of clean high speed digital signals. On the other hand, the low powered ROVs, and the narrow band acoustic signaling confront underwater signaling tasks even further. Traditionally, as the signal-to-noise ratio is increased, a better BER performance is achieved. In this context, the most advanced channel coding and signal processing techniques are employed to achieve a good BER performance by involving encoders and decoders for suitable SNR values based upon probability laws, not forgetting the inevitable hard decision device and expensive filters. Indeed, this paper proves with specially randomized input data and by a faultless simple detector, an errorless signaling with negative SNRs, negligible interference and multipath effects is possible. The proposed method can demonstrate further advantages over similar existing modulation techniques (e.g. spread spectrum systems) and it is not sensitive to channel delays which lead to hard synchronization and ciphering attacks.
A New Method for Medical Image Registration Based on Wavelet Multi-scale Transform

Medical image registration is the first step for image fusion and other imaging process. Current registration algorithm can be divided into feature-based and statistic-based approaches. In this paper, feature points of medical image are detected by using wavelet multi-scale product firstly, then registration of feature points based on mutual information is introduced, and translation parameters are calculated by using particle swarm optimization(PSO) algorithm. Experiments show that our method can reduce the computation of image registration while maintaining good accuracy.
Effects of experimental drought on soil respiration and radiocarbon efflux from a temperate forest soil

Soil moisture affects microbial decay of SOM and rhizosphere respiration (RR) in temperate forest soils, but isolating the response of soil respiration (SR) to summer drought and subsequent wetting is difficult because moisture changes are often confounded with temperature variation. We distinguished between temperature and moisture effects by simulation of prolonged soil droughts in a mixed deciduous forest at the Harvard Forest, Massachusetts. Roofs constructed over triplicate 5 × 5 m2 plots excluded throughfall water during the summers of 2001 (168 mm) and 2002 (344 mm), while adjacent control plots received ambient throughfall and the same natural temperature regime. In 2003, throughfall was not excluded to assess the response of SR under natural weather conditions after two prolonged summer droughts. Throughfall exclusion significantly decreased mean SR rate by 53 mg C m−2 h−1 over 84 days in 2001, and by 68 mg C m−2 h−1 over 126 days in 2002, representing 10–30% of annual SR in this forest and 35–75% of annual net ecosystem exchange (NEE) of C. The differences in SR were best explained by differences in gravimetric water content in the Oi horizon (r2=0.69) and the Oe/Oa horizon (r2=0.60). Volumetric water content of the A horizon was not significantly affected by throughfall exclusion. The radiocarbon signature of soil CO2 efflux and of CO2 respired during incubations of O horizon, A horizon and living roots allowed partitioning of SR into contributions from young C substrate (including RR) and from decomposition of older SOM. RR (root respiration and microbial respiration of young substrates in the rhizosphere) made up 43–71% of the total C respired in the control plots and 41–80% in the exclusion plots, and tended to increase with drought. An exception to this trend was an interesting increase in CO2 efflux of radiocarbon‐rich substrates during a period of abundant growth of mushrooms.
A Comparison of Trapeziectomy with and without Ligament Reconstruction and Tendon Interposition

Forty-three patients were randomly allocated to undergo either trapeziectomy alone (control) or with a ligament reconstruction and tendon interposition (LRTI) using an abductor pollicis longus tendon slip. The patients were reviewed at a median 13 (range, 7–29) months after surgery. The demographic characteristics, severity of disease and pre-operative clinical measurements of the two study groups were indistinguishable but LRTI lengthened the operation by approximately 15 minutes. Both groups expressed equal satisfaction with the operation and there were no significant differences between the two treatment groups. Simple trapeziectomy is an effective operation for osteoarthrosis at the base of the thumb and the addition of a ligament reconstruction was not shown to confer any additional benefit.
Analysis of source and system features for speaker recognition in emotional conditions

Source and system features are extensively used in building Speaker Recognition (SR) systems. In this paper, we investigate the influence of source and system features on the performance of the SR system in emotional conditions. The Linear Prediction Residual Cepstral Coefficients (LPRCC) which corresponds to source features, and Mel Frequency Cepstral Coefficients (MFCC) and Linear Prediction Cepstral Coefficients (LPCC) that correspond to system features are used for modeling SR system. A maximum-likelihood classifier based on Gaussian mixture density functions is used and experiments are carried out on 3 standard emotional speech databases (Indian Institute of Technology-Simulated Emotion speech corpus (IITKGP-SESC): Hindi, IITKGP-SESC: Telugu and German Emotional Speech Database (EMO-DB)). The speaker models are trained with neutral utterances and tested with 3 types (anger, happy and sad) of emotional speech utterances. Based on experimental results, the performance degradation was observed in mismatched (trained with one emotion and tested with other emotion) case and the average percentage of degradation in SR task using source features is approximately 16% more compared to system features. The performance degradation of SR system is nullified when trained and tested with the same emotion.
Knotting fingerprints resolve knot complexity and knotting pathways in ideal knots

We use disk matrices to define knotting fingerprints that provide fine-grained insights into the local knotting structure of ideal knots. These knots have been found to have spatial properties that highly correlate with those of interesting macromolecules. From this fine structure and an analysis of the associated planar graph, one can define a measure of knot complexity using the number of independent unknotting pathways from the global knot type as the knot is trimmed progressively to a short arc unknot. A specialization of the Cheeger constant provides a measure of constraint on these independent unknotting pathways. Furthermore, the structure of the knotting fingerprint supports a comparison of the tight knot pathways to the unconstrained unknotting pathways of comparable length.