Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Inverse Approach to the Graph Model for Conflict Resolution

Systems methodologies to model third-party intervention in international conflicts are developed within the framework of the graph model for conflict resolution (GMCR). An inverse GMCR is introduced to utilize the GMCR as a negotiation tool by altering the procedure of the original framework. The methodologies presented give a better understanding of how decision makers (DMs) can be motivated to undertake certain actions within the conflict. Moreover, the inverse GMCR tackles the problem of specifying which preferences for DMs lead to a particular resolution, thereby making it easier for a mediator or other third party to influence the course of the conflict. The methodologies are applied to a real-world dispute, a complex water conflict in the Middle East.
Hyperaldosteronism in pregnancy

Aldosterone is a key regulator of electrolyte and water homeostasis and plays a central role in blood pressure regulation. Hormonal changes during pregnancy, among them increased progesterone and aldosterone production, lead to the required plasma volume expansion of the maternal body as an accommodation mechanism for fetus growth. This review discusses the regulation of aldosterone production by aldosterone synthase (CYP11B2); the impact on aldosterone secretion due to the presence of a chimeric gene originating from a crossover between CYP11B1 and CYP11B2 in glucocorticoid remediable aldosteronism (GRA) — the inherited form of hypertension; enhanced aldosterone production in aldosterone-producing adenoma (APA); and idiopathic hyperaldosteronism (IHA). Features of hyperaldosteronism are also found in patients with apparent mineralocorticoid excess (AME), in which glucocorticoids exacerbate activation of the mineralocorticoid receptor (MR) because of a defect in the 11β-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase type 2 enzyme. Regulation of aldosterone production and tissue-specific activation of the mineralocorticoid receptor are prerequisites for optimal control of body fluids and blood pressure during pregnancy and contribute largely to the wellbeing of the mother-to-be.
Vision-Based Target Detection and Localization via a Team of Cooperative UAV and UGVs

Unmanned vehicles (UVs) play a key role in autonomous surveillance scenarios. A major task needed by these UVs in undertaking autonomous patrol missions is to detect the targets and find their locations in real-time. In this paper, a new vision-based target detection and localization system is presented to make use of different capabilities of UVs as a cooperative team. The scenario considered in this paper is a team of an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) and multiple unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) tracking and controlling crowds on a border area. A customized motion detection algorithm is applied to follow the crowd from the moving camera mounted on the UAV. Due to UAVs lower resolution and broader detection range, UGVs with higher resolution and fidelity are used as the individual human detectors, as well as moving landmarks to localize the detected crowds with unknown independently moving patterns at each time point. The UAVs localization algorithm, proposed in this paper, then converts the crowds' image locations into their real-world positions, using perspective transformation. A rule-of-thumb localization method by a UGV is also presented, which estimates the geographic locations of the detected individuals. Moreover, an agent-based simulation model is developed for system verification, with different parameters, such as flight altitude, number of landmarks, and landmark assignment method. The performance measure considered in this paper is the average Euclidean distance between the estimated locations and simulated geographic waypoints of the crowd. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed framework for autonomous surveillance by UVs.
A Novel Biomechanical Model-Aided IMU/UWB Fusion for Magnetometer-Free Lower Body Motion Capture

The available human body inertial motion capture (MoCap) systems are aided by magnetometers to remove the drift error in yaw angle estimation, which in turn limits their application in the presence of long-lasting magnetic disturbances in indoor environments. This paper introduces a magnetometer-free algorithm for lower-body MoCap including 3-D localization and posture tracking by fusing inertial sensors with an ultrawideband (UWB) localization system and a biomechanical model of the human lower body. Using our novel Kalman filter-based fusion algorithm, the UWB localization data aided by the biomechanical model can eliminate the drift in inertial yaw angle estimation of the lower-body segments. This magnetometer-free yaw angle estimation makes the algorithm insensitive to the magnetic disturbances. The algorithm is benchmarked against the optical MoCap system for various indoor activities including walking, jogging, jumping, and stairs ascending/descending. The results show that the proposed algorithm outperforms the available magnetometer-aided algorithms in yaw angle tracking under magnetic disturbances. In a uniform magnetic field, the algorithm shows similar accuracies in localization and joint angle tracking when compared with the magnetometer-aided methods. The localization accuracy of the proposed method is better than 4.5 cm in a 3-D space and its accuracy for knee angle tracking is about 3.5° and 4.5° in low and high dynamic motions, respectively.
Persistent Replication of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus in Human Tubular Kidney Cells Selects for Adaptive Mutations in the Membrane Protein

ABSTRACT Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) is a systemic disease characterized by both lung pathology and widespread extrapulmonary virus dissemination causing multiple organ injuries. In this regard, renal dysfunction is an ominous sign in patients with SARS. Indeed, clusters of SARS coronavirus (SARS-CoV) particles have been detected in the cytoplasm of renal tubular epithelial cells in postmortem studies, explaining the presence of infectious virus in the urine of SARS patients. In order to investigate the potential SARS-CoV kidney tropism, we have evaluated the susceptibility of human renal cells of tubular and glomerular origin to in vitro SARS-CoV infection. Immortalized cultures of differentiated proximal tubular epithelial cells (PTEC), glomerular mesangial cells (MC), and glomerular epithelial cells (podocytes) were found to express the SARS-CoV receptor angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 on their surface. Productive infection, however, occurred only in PTEC but not in glomerular cells. A transient infection with poor virus production was observed in MC, whereas podocytes were not permissive to SARS-CoV infection. In contrast to the cytopathic infection of the Vero E6 cell line, SARS-CoV did not cause overt cytopathic effects in PTEC or MC. Of interest, PTEC, but not MC, maintained stable levels of SARS-CoV production in serial subcultures, suggesting a persistent state of infection. In this regard, a SARS-CoV variant with increased replication capacity in PTEC was selected after four serial subculture passages. This SARS-CoV variant acquired a single nonconservative amino acid change from glutamic acid (E) to alanine (A) at position 11 in the viral membrane (M) protein. The E11A point mutation was sufficient for enhanced SARS-CoV replication and persistence in PTEC when introduced in a SARS-CoV recombinant infectious clone. These findings indicate that human PTEC may represent a site of SARS-CoV productive and persistent replication favoring the emergence of viral variants with increased replication capacity, at least in these kidney cells.
Alternative Live-Attenuated Influenza Vaccines Based on Modifications in the Polymerase Genes Protect against Epidemic and Pandemic Flu

ABSTRACT Human influenza is a seasonal disease associated with significant morbidity and mortality. Influenza vaccination is the most effective means for disease prevention. We have previously shown that mutations in the PB1 and PB2 genes of the live-attenuated influenza vaccine (LAIV) from the cold-adapted (ca) influenza virus A/Ann Arbor/6/60 (H2N2) could be transferred to avian influenza viruses and produce partially attenuated viruses. We also demonstrated that avian influenza viruses carrying the PB1 and PB2 mutations could be further attenuated by stably introducing a hemagglutinin (HA) epitope tag in the PB1 gene. In this work, we wanted to determine whether these modifications would also result in attenuation of a so-called triple reassortant (TR) swine influenza virus (SIV). Thus, the TR influenza A/swine/Wisconsin/14094/99 (H3N2) virus was generated by reverse genetics and subsequently mutated in the PB1 and PB2 genes. Here we show that a combination of mutations in this TR backbone results in an attenuated virus in vitro and in vivo. Furthermore, we show the potential of our TR backbone as a vaccine that provides protection against the 2009 swine-origin pandemic influenza H1N1 virus (S-OIV) when carrying the surface of a classical swine strain. We propose that the availability of alternative backbones to the conventional ca A/Ann Arbor/6/60 LAIV strain could also be useful in epidemic and pandemic influenza and should be considered for influenza vaccine development. In addition, our data provide evidence that the use of these alternative backbones could potentially circumvent the effects of original antigenic sin (OAS) in certain circumstances.
The relationship of TIMI risk index with SYNTAX and Gensini risk scores in predicting the extent and severity of coronary artery disease in patients with STEMI undergoing primary percutaneous coronary intervention

Objective: The prognostic value of the Global Registry of Acute Coronary Events (GRACE) risk score (GRS) and the Thrombolysis in Myocardial Infarction (TIMI) risk index (TRI) have been reported in patients with coronary artery disease (CAD). In this study, we sought to evaluate the association between TRI and the extent and severity of CAD evaluated by SYNTAX score (SS) and Gensini score in patients with ST elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI). Methods: A total of 290 patients with STEMI were included in the study. GRS and TRI were calculated on admission using specified variables. The extent and severity of CAD were evaluated using the SS and Gensini scores. The patients were divided into low (TRI ⩽19), intermediate (TRI 19–30), and high (TRI ⩾30) risk groups. A Pearson correlation analysis was used for the relationship between TRI, GRS, Gensini score and SS. Results: There were significant differences in the mean age (p < 0.001), admission heart rate (p < 0.001), admission systolic blood pressure (p = 0.009), SS (p < 0.001), GRS (p < 0.001) and in-hospital major adverse cardiac events (MACE) in all patients between the low, intermediate and high TRI risk groups. There was a positive significant correlation between TRI and SS (r = 0.24, p < 0.001), Gensini score (r = 0.18, p = 0.002), GRS (r = 0.74, p = 0.001) and in-hospital MACE (r = 0.29, p < 0.001). Conclusion: TRI is significantly related to SS and Gensini score in predicting the extent and severity of CAD in patients with STEMI.
Heterogeneous Information Fusion and Visualization for a Large-Scale Intelligent Video Surveillance System

Wide-area monitoring for a smart community can be challenging in systems engineering because of its large scale and heterogeneity at the sensor, algorithm, and visualization levels. A smart interface to visualize high-level information fused from a diversity of low-level surveillance data, and to facilitate rapid response of events, is critical for the design of the system. This paper presents an event-driven visualization mechanism fusing multimodal information for a large-scale intelligent video surveillance system. The mechanism proactively helps security personnel intuitively be aware of events through close cooperation among visualization, data fusion, and sensor tasking. The visualization not only displays 2-D, 3-D, and geographical information within a condensed form of interface but also automatically shows the only important video streams corresponding to spontaneous alerts and events by a decision process called display switching arbitration. The display switching arbitration decides the importance of cameras by score ranking that considers event urgency and semantic object features. This system has been successfully deployed in a campus to demonstrate its usability and efficiency for an installation with two camera clusters that include dozens of cameras, and with a lot of video analytics to detect alerts and events. A further simulation comparing the display switching arbitration with similar camera selection methods shows that our method improves the visualization by selecting better representative camera views and reducing redundant switchover among multiview videos.
Efficient trans-Encapsidation of Hepatitis C Virus RNAs into Infectious Virus-Like Particles

ABSTRACT Recently, complete replication of hepatitis C virus (HCV) in tissue culture was established using the JFH1 isolate. To analyze determinants of HCV genome packaging and virion assembly, we developed a system that supports particle production based on trans-packaging of subgenomic viral RNAs. Using JFH1 helper viruses, we show that subgenomic JFH1 replicons lacking the entire core to NS2 coding region are efficiently encapsidated into infectious virus-like particles. Similarly, chimeric helper viruses with heterologous structural proteins trans-package subgenomic JFH1 replicons. Like authentic cell culture-produced HCV (HCVcc) particles, these trans-complemented HCV particles (HCVTCP) penetrate target cells in a CD81 receptor-dependent fashion. Since HCVTCP production was limited by competition between the helper and subgenomic RNA and to avoid contamination of HCVTCP stocks with helper viruses, we created HCV packaging cells. These cells encapsidate various HCV replicons with high efficiency, reaching infectivity titers up to 106 tissue culture infectious doses 50 per milliliter. The produced particles display a buoyant density comparable to HCVcc particles and can be propagated in the packaging cell line but support only a single-round infection in naïve cells. Together, this work demonstrates that subgenomic HCV replicons are assembly competent, thus excluding cis-acting RNA elements in the core-to-NS2 genomic region essential for RNA packaging. The experimental system described here should be helpful to decipher the mechanisms of HCV assembly and to identify RNA elements and viral proteins involved in particle formation. Similar to other vector systems of plus-strand RNA viruses, HCVTCP may prove valuable for gene delivery or vaccination approaches.
Structural and Biochemical Analyses of Swine Major Histocompatibility Complex Class I Complexes and Prediction of the Epitope Map of Important Influenza A Virus Strains

ABSTRACT The lack of a peptide-swine leukocyte antigen class I (pSLA I) complex structure presents difficulties for the study of swine cytotoxic T lymphocyte (CTL) immunity and molecule vaccine development to eliminate important swine viral diseases, such as influenza A virus (IAV). Here, after cloning and comparing 28 SLA I allelic genes from Chinese Heishan pigs, pSLA-3*hs0202 was crystalized and solved. SLA-3*hs0202 binding with sβ2m and a KMNTQFTAV (hemagglutinin [HA]-KMN9) peptide from the 2009 pandemic swine H1N1 strain clearly displayed two distinct conformations with HA-KMN9 peptides in the structures, which are believed to be beneficial to stimulate a broad spectrum of CTL immune responses. Notably, we found that different HA-KMN9 conformations are caused, not only by the flexibility of the side chains of residues in the peptide-binding groove (PBG), but also by the skewing of α1 and α2 helixes forming the PBG. In addition, alanine scanning and circular-dichroism (CD) spectra confirmed that the B, D, and F pockets play critical biochemical roles in determining the peptide-binding motif of SLA-3*hs0202. Based on biochemical parameters and comparisons to similar pockets in other known major histocompatibility complex class I (MHC-I) structures, the fundamental motif for SLA-3*hs0202 was determined to be X-(M/A/R)-(N/Q/R/F)-X-X-X-X-X-(V/I) by refolding in vitro and multiple mutant peptides. Finally, 28 SLA-3*hs0202-restricted epitope candidates were identified from important IAV strains, and two of them have been found in humans as HLA-A*0201-specific IAV epitopes. Structural and biochemical illumination of pSLA-3*hs0202 can benefit vaccine development to control IAV in swine. IMPORTANCE We crystalized and solved the first SLA-3 structure, SLA-3*hs0202, and found that it could present the same IAV peptide with two distinct conformations. Unlike previous findings showing that variable peptide conformations are caused only by the flexibility of the side chains in the groove, the skewing of the α1 and α2 helixes is important in the different peptide conformations in SLA-3*hs0202. We also determined the fundamental motif for SLA-3*hs0202 to be X-(M/A/R)-(N/Q/R/F)-X-X-X-X-X-(V/I) based on a series of structural and biochemical analyses, and 28 SLA-3*hs0202-restricted epitope candidates were identified from important IAV strains. We believe our structure and analyses of pSLA-3*hs0202 can benefit vaccine development to control IAV in swine.
Adaptive Neural Control of Uncertain Nonstrict-Feedback Stochastic Nonlinear Systems with Output Constraint and Unknown Dead Zone

An approximation-based adaptive neural controller is constructed for uncertain stochastic nonlinear systems in nonstrict-feedback form appearing dead-zone and output constraint. Neural networks (NNs) are directly utilized to approximate the unknown nonlinear functions existing in systems. A barrier Lyapunov function is introduced to ensure that the trajectory of output is limited within a predetermined range. By integrating NNs into the backstepping technique, an adaptive neural controller is designed to guarantee all variables existing in the considered closed-loop system are semi-globally uniformly ultimately bounded, and by appropriately tuning several design parameters online, the tracking error can be converged to a small neighborhood of the origin. Simulations on a numerical example are given to demonstrate the effectiveness of the method proposed in this paper.
Teleoperation Control Based on Combination of Wave Variable and Neural Networks

In this paper, a novel control scheme is developed for a teleoperation system, combining the radial basis function (RBF) neural networks (NNs) and wave variable technique to simultaneously compensate for the effects caused by communication delays and dynamics uncertainties. The teleoperation system is set up with a TouchX joystick as the master device and a simulated Baxter robot arm as the slave robot. The haptic feedback is provided to the human operator to sense the interaction force between the slave robot and the environment when manipulating the stylus of the joystick. To utilize the workspace of the telerobot as much as possible, a matching process is carried out between the master and the slave based on their kinematics models. The closed loop inverse kinematics (CLIK) method and RBF NN approximation technique are seamlessly integrated in the control design. To overcome the potential instability problem in the presence of delayed communication channels, wave variables and their corrections are effectively embedded into the control system, and Lyapunov-based analysis is performed to theoretically establish the closed-loop stability. Comparative experiments have been conducted for a trajectory tracking task, under the different conditions of various communication delays. Experimental results show that in terms of tracking performance and force reflection, the proposed control approach shows superior performance over the conventional methods.
Systemic Dissemination of H5N1 Influenza A Viruses in Ferrets and Hamsters after Direct Intragastric Inoculation

ABSTRACT Although oral exposure to H5N1 highly pathogenic avian influenza viruses is a risk factor for infection in humans, it is unclear how oral exposure to these virus results in lethal respiratory infections. To address this issue, we inoculated ferrets and hamsters with two highly pathogenic H5N1 strains. These viruses, inoculated directly into the stomach, were isolated from the large intestine and the mesenteric lymph nodes within 1 day of inoculation and subsequently spread to multiple tissues, including lung, liver, and brain. Histopathologic analysis of ferrets infected with virus via direct intragastric inoculation revealed lymph folliculitis in the digestive tract and mesenteric lymph nodes and focal interstitial pneumonia. Comparable results were obtained with the hamster model. We conclude that, in mammals, ingested H5N1 influenza viruses can disseminate to nondigestive organs, possibly through the lymphatic system of the gastrointestinal tract.
In Vitro Reconstitution Reveals Key Intermediate States of Trimer Formation by the Dengue Virus Membrane Fusion Protein

ABSTRACT The flavivirus dengue virus (DV) infects cells through a low-pH-triggered membrane fusion reaction mediated by the viral envelope protein E. E is an elongated transmembrane protein with three domains and is organized as a homodimer on the mature virus particle. During fusion, the E protein homodimer dissociates, inserts the hydrophobic fusion loop into target membranes, and refolds into a trimeric hairpin in which domain III (DIII) packs against the central trimer. It is clear that E refolding drives membrane fusion, but the steps in hairpin formation and their pH requirements are unclear. Here, we have used truncated forms of the DV E protein to reconstitute trimerization in vitro. Protein constructs containing domains I and II (DI/II) were monomeric and interacted with membranes to form core trimers. DI/II-membrane interaction and trimerization occurred efficiently at both neutral and low pH. The DI/II core trimer was relatively unstable and could be stabilized by binding exogenous DIII or by the formation of mixed trimers containing DI/II plus E protein with all three domains. The mixed trimer had unoccupied DIII interaction sites that could specifically bind exogenous DIII at either low or neutral pH. Truncated DV E proteins thus reconstitute hairpin formation and define properties of key domain interactions during DV fusion.
Decentralized stabilization of large-scale systems via state-feedback and using descriptor systems

In this paper a new method for decentralized stabilization of a large-scale system in general form via state-feedback is presented. An appropriate descriptor system is defined for a large-scale system, such that the new system is in input-decentralized form. The interactions between the subsystems are considered as uncertainty. Sufficient conditions for stability of the closed-loop uncertain system are introduced. By appropriately assigning the eigenstructure of each isolated subsystem, these conditions are satisfied. This is accomplished by using the method suggested by Patton and Liu, such that the effects of the interconnections between the subsystems are compensated via the combination of genetic algorithms and gradient-based optimization.