Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
M1 Protein Triggers a Phosphoinositide Cascade for Group A Streptococcus Invasion of Epithelial Cells

ABSTRACT Invasion of nonphagocytic cells by bacteria provides a favorable niche for persistence and evasion of host defenses and antibiotics. M protein is a major virulence factor because it promotes high-frequency invasion of epithelial cells by group A Streptococcus (GAS) and also renders the bacterium resistant to phagocytosis. In this study, we investigated the role of M1 protein from serotype M1 strain 90-226 in regulating mammalian signal transduction and cytoskeletal rearrangement for bacterial entry. LY294002 and wortmannin, which are inhibitors of phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase (PI 3-K) blocked invasion of epithelial cells by GAS by 75 and 80%, respectively, but failed to inhibit invasion by Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium. Also, epithelial cells transiently transfected with dominant negative p85 and p110 genes, the regulatory and catalytic subunits of PI 3-K, respectively, were less able to be invaded by GAS. To separate the influence of other streptococcal virulence factors from M protein, Lactococcus lactis was engineered to express M1 protein on its surface. L. lactis(pLM1) invaded epithelial cells efficiently in vitro, and PI 3-K inhibitors blocked 90% of this invasion. Purified soluble M1 protein stimulated the formation of stress fibers and actin tuffs on epithelial cells. LY294002 and wortmannin inhibited these cellular changes. A phosphoinositide analogue also inhibited the invasion of epithelial cells by GAS. Therefore, M1 protein, either directly or via bound fibronectin, initiates signals that depend on the lipid kinase PI 3-K pathway, which paves the way for cytoskeletal rearrangement that internalize the bacterium.
Authentication and authorization for Smart Grid application interfaces

Smart Grid Applications interfaces with other Smart Grid and back office applications to solve various business needs. For instance billing systems needs to be interfaced with AMI system to find out the power usage in order to bill the customer. AMI System may be interfaced with DMS system as part of demand response management. Such interfaces could cross logical, physical and organizational boundaries thus creating a need for secure systems integration. When interfacing one Smart Grid application with another one has to ensure that only authorized users can interface and that requires authentication to be done in the first place. In a highly integrated Smart Grid environment that crosses across applications from various vendors and some may be hosted outside, it is a challenge to create authentication and authorization policies and enforce them in a consistent manner. This paper will describe the challenges regarding authentication and authorization such as the possibility of losing the authenticated user Identity when various applications are interfaced, privilege escalation, and the challenge of defining and enforcing consistent authorization policy. This paper will also describe various interoperability standards and a reference architecture that will address the challenges.
Micro balloon actuators for aerodynamic control

A robust, large-force, large-deflection micro balloon actuator for aerodynamic (manoeuvring) control of transonic aircraft has been developed. Using a novel process, high yield linear arrays of silicone balloons on a robust silicon substrate have been fabricated that can deflect vertically in excess of one mm. Balloon actuators have been tested under cyclic conditions to assess reliability. The actuators have been characterized in a wind tunnel to assess their suitability as aerodynamic control surfaces and flight-tested on a jet fighter to assess their resistance to varied temperatures and pressures at high velocity.
Forecast Techniques Applied to Feasibility Studies for Micro-Hydraulic Generation

This paper presents the application of time series forecasting techniques to feasibility studies of micro-hydraulic generation. Available literature, details several techniques developed and implemented to perform time series forecasting. This paper will focus on the following techniques: ARIMA (auto-regressive integrated moving average), neural networks and evolutionary computation (EC). Based on the obtained results of the forecast techniques applied to the water flow time series, it is possible to determine if a micro-hydraulic plant can be installed, the theoretical power generation and the technical characteristics of each electro-mechanical component of the micro-hydraulic generation system.
Insulin Absorption from Lipodystrophic Areas: A (Neglected) Source of Trouble for Insulin Therapy?

The experienced clinical diabetologist first checks the skin at the area where the patient usually injects his insulin when he sees widely fluctuating blood glucose levels in the diary of the patient. He knows that insulin absorption from skin with lipodystrophic changes is irregular. However, our scientific knowledge about why this is the case is very limited. Most probably, the number of blood vessels near the insulin depot in the subcutaneous tissue varies depending on the nature of the lipodystrophic changes, or the structural changes in this tissue hamper the diffusion of insulin. Not only is our knowledge about the number of patients who exhibit such changes very limited, but also our understanding why such changes show up in certain patients and not in others is minimal. More practically important, we also have few quantitative studies investigating the impact of this diabetes-related complication on insulin absorption/insulin action; however, it is not difficult to run such studies in practice. Nevertheless, it is impressive to see how often metabolic control improves considerably once the patients apply the insulin into other skin areas.
Hybrid beamforming in WCDMA antenna array system

In chip-level beamforming, the received signal vector at chip-rate and known pilot symbols are used to find a beamforming weight vector. But in a WCDMA FDD uplink, because the DPDCH and DPCCH are code-multiplexed and weighted by gain factors, the chip energy of DPCCH is less than the chip energy of DPDCH in the chip (subchip) rate received signal vector. As users transmit a higher DPDCH data rate (lower DPDCH spreading factor), the performance of the chip-level beamforming may be degraded. In this paper, we proposed hybrid beamforming, which generates a beamforming weight vector using the despreaded DPCCH symbols and known pilot symbols at symbol rate, and beamforms at chip (subchip) rate. The simulation results shows the performances of chip-level beamforming and hybrid beamforming based on the NLMS (normalized LMS) algorithm for different DPDCH data rates.
Atypical case of AL amyloidosis with urinary erythrocyte casts

We present the case of a 73-year-old man who developed an acute, severe febrile illness with multiorgan dysfunction, featuring renal failure, nephrotic-range proteinuria, microhematuria, and a skin rash. Numerous erythrocyte casts were found on urine microscopy. Typically, the finding of urinary erythrocyte casts indicates the presence of an underlying glomerular inflammatory disease. However, on renal biopsy, only amyloid light-chain (AL) amyloidosis and tubular injury were the predominant findings with no signs of glomerular or vascular inflammation. Photomicrographs of urinary sediment as well as renal biopsy histopathology of the presented case are shown. The unusual combination of findings, is then discussed in light of the existing literature on renal amyloidosis as well as erythrocyte casts in conditions other than glomerulonephritis.
Effects of white noise on Callsign Acquisition Test and Modified Rhyme Test scores

The Callsign Acquisition Test (CAT) is a speech intelligibility test developed by the US Army Research Laboratory. The test has been used to evaluate speech transmission through various communication systems but has not been yet sufficiently standardised and validated. The aim of this study was to compare CAT and Modified Rhyme Test (MRT) performance in the presence of white noise across a range of signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs). A group of 16 normal-hearing listeners participated in the study. The speech items were presented at 65 dB(A) in the background of white noise at SNRs of −18, −15, −12, −9 and −6 dB. The results showed a strong positive association (75.14%) between the two tests, but significant differences between the CAT and MRT absolute scores in the range of investigated SNRs. Based on the data, a function to predict CAT scores based on existing MRT scores and vice versa was formulated. Statement of Relevance:This work compares performance data of a common speech intelligibility test (MRT) with a new test (CAT) in the presence of white noise. The results here can be used as a part of the standardisation procedures and provide insights to the predictive capabilities of the CAT to quantify speech intelligibility communication in high-noise military environments.
An Efficient Boundary Handling with a Modified Density Calculation for SPH

We propose a new boundary handling method for smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH). Previous approaches required the use of boundary particles to prevent particles from sticking to the boundary. We address this issue by correcting the fundamental equations of SPH with the integration of a kernel function. Our approach is able to directly handle triangle mesh boundaries without the need for boundary particles. We also show how our approach can be integrated into a position‐based fluid framework.
Réordonnancement de candidats reponses pour un système de questions-réponses. (Re-ranking of candidates answers of a question-answering system)

L’objectif de cette these a ete de proposer une approche robuste pour traiter le probleme de la recherche dela reponse precise a une question.Notre premiere contribution a ete la conception et la mise en œuvre d’un modele de representation robuste de l’informationet son implementation. Son objectif est d’apporter aux phrases des documents et aux questions de l’informationstructurelle, composee de groupes de mots types (segments types) et de relations entre ces groupes. Ce modele a ete evalue sur differents corpus (ecrits, oraux, web) et a donne de bons resultats, prouvant sa robustesse.Notre seconde contribution a consiste en la conception d’une methode de reordonnancement des candidats reponsesretournes par un systeme de questions-reponses. Cette methode a aussi ete concue pour des besoins de robustesse, ets’appuie sur notre premiere contribution. L’idee est de comparer une question et le passage d’ou a ete extraite une reponse candidate, et de calculer un score de similarite, en s’appuyant notamment sur une distance d’edition.Le reordonnanceur a ete evalue sur les donnees de differentes campagnes d’evaluation. Les resultats obtenus sontparticulierement positifs sur des questions longues et complexes. Ces resultats prouvent l’interet de notre methode, notreapproche etant particulierement adaptee pour traiter les questions longues, et ce quel que soit le type de donnees. Lereordonnanceur a ainsi ete evalue sur l’edition 2010 de la campagne d’evaluation Quaero, ou les resultats sont positifs.
Touch and cross router

A novel general routing algorithm is presented. Each net is routed to minimize the cost function defined by a weighted sum of penalties. Two types of design rule violations, touches and crosses, are factors of the cost function. Using these violations enables the algorithm to achieve 100% completion even when routing problems have nets which must be considered simultaneously. This type of problem could not be routed completely by conventional rip-up routers. The algorithm was implemented on a newly developed massively parallel computer. Experimental results on Burstein's difficult switch box problem and several small printed circuit boards show that the algorithm is as powerful as a human expert designer. <<ETX>>
Many Layered Support Vector Machines ( Bachelorproject )

This thesis describes the expansion of the machine learning algorithm known as the two-layered Support Vector Machine (SVM) (Wiering, Schutten, Millea, Meijster, and Schomaker, 2013) in order to improve the performance of this system. First, a description of the standard SVM is given, followed by an overview of the two-layered SVM. Then another layer of SVMs is added to the two-layered SVM. The mathematical implications of this expansion will be described in detail. The metaparameters of the three-layered SVM are then found by using a combination of particle swarm optimisation and the UCB bandit algorithm. Experimental results show that the three-layered SVM outperforms a singlelayered SVM. However, these results do not show an increase in performance compared to the twolayered SVM.
A Survey of FPGA-Based Neural Network Accelerator

Recent researches on neural network have shown significant advantage in machine learning over traditional algorithms based on handcrafted features and models. Neural network is now widely adopted in regions like image, speech and video recognition. But the high computation and storage complexity of neural network inference poses great difficulty on its application. CPU platforms are hard to offer enough computation capacity. GPU platforms are the first choice for neural network process because of its high computation capacity and easy to use development frameworks. On the other hand, FPGA-based neural network inference accelerator is becoming a research topic. With specifically designed hardware, FPGA is the next possible solution to surpass GPU in speed and energy efficiency. Various FPGA-based accelerator designs have been proposed with software and hardware optimization techniques to achieve high speed and energy efficiency. In this paper, we give an overview of previous work on neural network inference accelerators based on FPGA and summarize the main techniques used. An investigation from software to hardware, from circuit level to system level is carried out to complete analysis of FPGA-based neural network inference accelerator design and serves as a guide to future work.
Role of regulatory T cells in tolerance to coagulation factors

Summary. The immune response to coagulation factors VIII or IX, in particular formation of inhibitory antibodies, complicates treatment of hemophilia. Therefore, a number of recent studies in animal models have explored novel approaches toward induction of immune tolerance in protein or gene replacement therapy. Strong evidence has emerged that regulatory T cells (Treg) are an important component of the mechanism by which tolerance is maintained and inhibitor formation, a T help dependent response, is prevented. Limited data in patients also support this concept. In particular, CD4+ CD25+ FoxP3+ Treg, whether naturally occurring or induced, have been invoked in suppression of antibody and of cytotoxic T lymphocyte responses to the therapeutic clotting factor. This review summarizes the data on this emerging concept of Treg‐mediated regulation of the immune response in treatment of hemophilia, strategies and mechanisms of Treg induction and function, and the implications for development of immune tolerance protocols.
A Modeling Approach for Cloud Infrastructure Planning Considering Dependability and Cost Requirements

Cloud computing is a model in which resources such as storage, applications, and networking infrastructures can be offered as services over the internet. Cloud applications are becoming even bigger and more complex with a high availability requirement. This paper presents a modeling strategy based on a hierarchical and heterogeneous modeling for cloud infrastructure planning. This modeling strategy allows the selection of cloud infrastructures according to dependability and cost requirements. Additionally, a stochastic model generator for cloud infrastructure planning provides automatic generation of dependability and cost models for representing cloud infrastructures. A case study based on Moodle hosted on a Eucalyptus platform is adopted to demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed solution (modeling strategy and tooling).
Fluid Vibration Induced in T-Junction with Double Side Branches

A T-junction is a fundamental fluid element prevalent in pipe networks of water supplies and power plants. In the present study, a double T-junction was investigated for flow instability and fluid vibration. Both axi-aligned and skewed double T-junctions are examined from viewpoint of flow instability. With single-phase flow in an open-ended double T-junction, fluid vibration is induced in both side branches because of a high shear rate with a point of inflection. The frequency of vibration in the downstream branch is higher than that in the upstream branch. Except for the upstream branch in the skewed double T-junction, the frequency is higher than that in a single T-junction. The fluid vibrations are closely associated with the fluid interference created by the presence of the two side branches.
A Minimal Control Multiagent for Collision Avoidance and Velocity Alignment

This paper investigates a group of multiagents moving on a 2-D plane with a constant speed but maneuverable headings. It is called a minimal control multiagent model (MCMA) when each agent employs a static decentralized control law that relies on its neighbors’ relative positions with respect to its local reference frame. In other words, the control law does not involve any complicated velocity measurement or estimation mechanism. Various minimal multiagent models have been investigated and extensively simulated in terms of their collaborative behaviors. This paper, for the first time, gives rigorous theoretical proofs for the functionalities of an MCMA model in both collision avoidance and velocity alignment.
Celiac Disease in Children With Migraine

To the Editor. — In an interesting article, Zelnik et al1 recently investigated the presence of neurologic disorders in patients with celiac disease (CD). They found those disorders to be more common in children with CD (51.4%) than in controls (19.9%). The authors also demonstrated therapeutic benefit with gluten-free diet only in patients with hypotonia or migraine. On the other hand, Gabrielli et al2 reported positive serology for CD in a significantly higher percentage of patients with migraine than in a control group (4.4% vs 0.4%). In an attempt to verify if CD could be considered among the causes of migraine in children, we studied a total of 87 patients (54% females) followed by the Migraine Clinic of the Pediatric Department of the University of Ferrara, diagnosed according to the criteria of the International Headache Society.3 Median age was 11.5 2.6 years. Informed consent was obtained by the children’s guardians, and the study was approved by the University of Ferrara Ethics Committee. Concentrations of serum IgG antitransglutaminase (TgA) were measured in all patients. TgA antibodies were assessed by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (Eurospital, Trieste, Italy). Titers 7 arbitrary units were considered positive. Used as historical controls were 543 children (52% females) of the median age of 13.5 years attending local schools. They had been examined as part of a previous study on the prevalence of CD in Northern Italian children by means of IgA and IgG antigliadin and IgA antiendomysial antibodies. The different tests used in the 2 groups of patients are comparable. In fact, a recent study found the overall accuracy of TgA and of antiendomysial antibodies to be 92.8% and 93.4%, respectively.4 One of the children with migraine, a 9-year-old girl, was found to be positive (1.1%). She was affected by migraine without aura. Positivity was confirmed by IgA antiendomysial antibodies and by jejunal biopsy. Discontinuation of gluten from the diet decreased the number of monthly migrainous attacks from 3 to 1. Among controls, 2 children (0.037%) were found to be positive: diagnosis was histologically confirmed in 1, and the family of the other child declined additional work-up. Although the sample of children with migraine is small, our results suggest that an association between migraine and CD might exist and that larger studies should be performed. If these data are confirmed, serology for CD should probably be included in the work-up of migraine.
A path-following algorithm for missiles

The missile path-following problem has not been studied particularly as much as other vehicles. This fact is the source of our motivation behind this work. In this paper, a path-following algorithm, which is specifically designed for missiles but can be applied to other vehicles as well, is proposed. Presented algorithm is composed of a feedback and feed-forward control rule. Feedback controller part of the algorithm is the modified version of the Predictor-Corrector algorithm, which has a widespread usage in the field of robotics. This modification, which is proposed in this paper, is done by adding missile's velocity as an adaptation variable. On the other hand, path's centripetal acceleration is used as the feed-forward control term which leads to an enhancement in the overall performance of the algorithm by avoiding path-following errors due to curvatures. Proposed algorithm is tested in the developed point mass simulation and it is verified through simulations that the algorithm performs at least as well as expected and shows promising results for implementation.
Formation of herpes simplex virus type 1 replication compartments by transfection: requirements and localization to nuclear domain 10

During infection, the seven essential herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV-1) replication proteins are found in globular nuclear structures called replication compartments. Replication compartments form adjacent to ND10, nuclear matrix-bound domains which are present in most cell types but whose function is unknown (G. G. Maul, I. M. Ishov, and R. D. Everett, Virology 217:67-75, 1996). We now demonstrate that replication compartments can be formed by cotransfecting Vero cells with constructs expressing the seven essential viral replication proteins and a plasmid containing an HSV-1 origin of DNA replication. Like replication compartments in infected cells, replication compartments formed by cotransfection contain all of the essential viral replication proteins, are sites of DNA synthesis, and are found adjacent to ND10. However, neither the viral origin-binding protein nor a plasmid containing an HSV-1 origin of DNA replication is individually required for the formation of transfection replication compartments, although the presence of each increases the efficiency of replication compartment formation. Further, we provide evidence that UL29 independently localizes adjacent to ND10 and so may play a role in directing replication compartments to these preexisting nuclear structures.
Familial Clustering Strongly Suggests that the Phenotypic Variation of the 8344 A>G Lys Mitochondrial tRNA Mutation is Encoded in cis

The maternally inherited 8344 A>G mutation in the mitochondrial Lys tRNA is classically associated with the myoclonic epilepsy, ragged‐red muscle fiber (MERRF) syndrome. Multiple lipomatosis (Madelung's disease) is occasionally described. Here we report a large kindred with a statistically significant clustering of very unusual clinical manifestations.