Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Human secretory and serum antibodies recognize environmentally induced antigens of Giardia lamblia

The variability in duration and severity of infection with Giardia lamblia is likely to be due to trophozoite interactions with immune and nonimmune components of the small intestinal milieu. Despite its potential importance, nothing is known of the isotype or the specificity of the secretory antibody response to G. lamblia. In the present study, we show that serum and secretory antibodies recognize many Giardia antigens whose expression is induced by exposure to selected intestinal conditions. Isotype-specific immunoblots of antigens from trophozoites grown at pH 7.0 without bile or at the intestinal pH of 7.8 with bile were reacted with milk or serum antibodies from subjects with or without histories of giardiasis. While the results were complex, several key observations emerged. Serum and secretory immunoglobulin A (IgA), IgM, and IgG antibodies reacted with many regulated antigens. Antigen recognition patterns varied with isotype and between milk and serum antibodies of the same isotype. Antigen recognition also differed among subjects. Antibodies from virtually every patient recognized some G. lamblia antigens. Furthermore, milk and/or serum samples from putative controls without histories of giardiasis were positive more frequently than would be predicted from published prevalence studies, suggesting either that these antibodies may be cross-reactive or that undiagnosed infections with G. lamblia may be more common than previously thought. Thus, recognition of neoantigens induced by host conditions may be due to conserved or cross-reactive epitopes which could constitute a form of immune evasion by G. lamblia.
Evidence that epithelial and mesenchymal estrogen receptor-alpha mediates effects of estrogen on prostatic epithelium.

In combination with androgens, estrogens can induce aberrant growth and malignancy of the prostate gland. Estrogen action is mediated through two receptor subtypes: estrogen receptors alpha (ERalpha) and beta (ERbeta). Wild-type (wt) and transgenic mice lacking a functional ERalpha (alphaERKO) or ERbeta (betaERKO) were treated with the synthetic estrogen diethylstilbestrol (DES). DES induced prostatic squamous metaplasia (SQM) in wt and betaERKO but not in alphaERKO mice, indicating an essential role for ERalpha, but not ERbeta, in the induction of SQM of prostatic epithelium. In order to determine the respective roles of epithelial and stromal ERalpha in this response, the following tissue recombinants were constructed with prostatic epithelia (E) and stroma (S) from wt and ERKO mice: wt-S+wt-E, alphaERKO-S+alphaERKO-E, wt-S+alphaERKO-E, and alphaERKO-S+wt-E. A metaplastic response to DES was observed in wt-S+wt-E tissue recombinants. This response to DES involved multilayering of basal epithelial cells, expression of cytokeratin 10, and up-regulation of the progesterone receptor. Tissue recombinants containing alphaERKO-E and/or -S (alphaERKO-S+alphaERKO-E, wt-S+alphaERKO-E, and alphaERKO-S+wt-E) failed to respond to DES. Therefore, full and uniform epithelial SQM requires ERalpha in the epithelium and stroma. These results provide a novel insight into the cell-cell interactions mediating estrogen action in the prostate via ERalpha.
Group delay functions for speaker diarization

Speaker diarization is the task of determining “who spoke when” in a speech recording of an unknown duration containing an unknown number of speakers. The very unsupervised nature of this task makes it more challenging and demands that the feature representation used be highly discriminative across speakers. Commonly used features based on the short time Fourier transform are usually derived from the magnitude spectrum. The short time phase information is usually not used due to the complications involved in its processing. However, the information embedded in phase has been shown beneficial for many speech tasks. In this paper, we explore it for speaker diarization. Two approaches for utilizing information from the phase, through group delay functions are explored. We present our experiments and results on the publicly available AMI meeting corpus. Our experiments demonstrate that the features derived from group delay functions provide comparable or improved diarization accuracy over and on fusion with the popularly used mel-frequency cepstrum coefficients (MFCC) features.
Notice of RetractionMulti-agent Research on Immunology-Based Emergency Preplan

With management theory, life science and information science as the guiding ideology and based on theories and methods of immunology, multi-Agent modeling and simulation as well as emergency management, this paper constructs immunology-based emergency preplan multi-Agent theoretical framework, put forwards the generation of emergency preplan multi-Agent and its interaction mechanism with outburst incident, analyzes the evolution of clonal selection and emergency preplan multi-Agent, and designs retaining of optimal emergency plan and updating of memory base. The research findings have important theoretical value and practical directive significance on emergency management.
A survey of the pathology of marmosets (Callithrix jacchus) under experiment

A survey of the pathology of 567 laboratory-bred cotton-eared marmosets (Callithrix jacchus) is presented. There were few significant pathological changes in animals used in studies up to 6 months in duration, suggesting that the marmoset can be a useful non-human primate species for routine toxicology. The most common pathological changes encountered were chronic colitis, chronic thyroiditis and interstitial mononuclear infiltration in the kidney. No internal parasites were encountered, nor were any viral or bacterial diseases identified. Fungal disease was confined to a few cases of oesophageal mycoses. In a long term study a variety of pathological changes have been observed, including a 'wasting' syndrome, not related to skeletal muscle myopathy, with atrophy of the gastrointestinal tract, salivary glands and gonads, haemosiderosis and fatty change in the liver and osteoporosis. It is suggested that these changes may be related to protein deficiency and that the nutritional requirements of the marmoset require further investigation.
Fatigue in Multiple Sclerosis: A Review of the Exploratory and Therapeutic Potential of Non-Invasive Brain Stimulation

Fatigue is the most commonly reported symptom in patients with multiple sclerosis (MS). It is a worrisome, frequent, and debilitating manifestation that could occur at any time during the course of MS and in all its subtypes. It could engender professional, familial, and socioeconomic consequences and could severely compromise the patients' quality of life. Clinically, the symptom exhibits motor, cognitive, and psychosocial facets. It is also important to differentiate between perceived or subjective self-reported fatigue and fatigability which is an objective measure of decrement in the performance of cognitive or motor tasks. The pathophysiology of MS fatigue is complex, and its management remains a challenge, despite the existing body of literature on this matter. Hence, unraveling its neural mechanisms and developing treatment options that target the latter might constitute a promising field to explore. A PubMed/Medline/Scopus search was conducted to perform this review which aims (a) to reappraise the available electrophysiological studies that explored fatigue in patients with MS with a particular focus on corticospinal excitability measures obtained using transcranial magnetic stimulation and (b) to assess the potential utility of employing neuromodulation (i.e., non-invasive brain stimulation techniques) in this context. A special focus will be put on the role of transcranial direct current stimulation and transcranial magnetic stimulation. We have provided some suggestions that will help overcome the current limitations in upcoming research.
Human Body Reshaping Based on Images

In this paper we present a method of human body reshaping which is based on 2D images. We first reshape a 3D human body from a 2D image by changing the 3D morphable circles in the 3D human body model, and then project the 3D model onto the original 2D plane. There are three main steps in our method. First, we can acquire the human body contour and the limbs information through the marks which were made by users. Secondly, we generate the 3D morphable circles from the body contour. The 3D morphable circle is a set of 3D annular points, and we can connect the points in each circle to create 3D meshes which can be used to generate the 3D human model. At last, we use texture mapping and affine transformation to reshape the body model and project it on to the 2D plan to implement the 2D images deformation algorithm. The method proposed in this paper can effectively combine 2D images with 3D graphics with little costs. The method is easy-to-use and has a definite application prospect in e-commerce and online entertainment fields. A lot of experiments illustrate that our method is acceptable.
Largest 4-Connected Components of 3-Connected Planar Triangulations

Let Tn be a 3-connected n-vertex planar triangulation chosen uniformly at random. Then the number of vertices in the largest 4-connected component of Tn is asymptotic to n/2 with probability tending to 1 as n ∞. It follows that almost all 3-connected triangulations with n vertices have a cycle of length at least n/2 + o(n).
Antenna design for smartphones using modal/Eigenmode analysis

Practical Antenna Design for handheld devices is demonstrated through the utilization of the modal/Eigenmode theory of antennas. Here, a review of the underlying design fundamentals is outlined. Next, a design example featuring the antenna design of a modern smartphone is presented. The design cycle is simplified through finding an antenna with appropriate complex resonance frequency to cover a required band. Locating the appropriate feed position is then a matter of extracting the corresponding impedance map for this antenna.
COMPORTAMENTO DE CULTIVARES DE FEIJOEIRO COMUM À MURCHA-DE-CURTOBACTERIUM*

Behaviour of dry bean cultivars to bacterial wilt The objective of this research was to evaluate the reaction of 40 dry bean (Phaseolus vulgaris) cultivars inoculated with two isolates of Curtobacterium flaccumfaciens pv. flacummfaciens, and the shoot dry weight of resistant and susceptible dry bean cultivars inoculated or not with this bacteria. The cultivars IAC Carioca Aruã, IAC Carioca Akytã, and IAC Carioca Pyatã were resistant, whereas the following cultivars were susceptible to bacterial wilt: A 768, Aeté, Aporé, Bambuí, Bico de Ouro, BR IPA 11 Brígida, Carioca MG, Carioquinha, Catu, Corrente, Diamante Negro, FT Bonito, FT Nobre, FT-120, IAC Carioca, IAC Maravilha, IAC Una, IAPAR 14, IAPAR 16, IAPAR 31, IAPAR 44, IPA 6, Iraí, Jalo Precoce, Jamapa, Onix, Ouro Negro, Pérola, R 161, RAO 33, Rio Tibagi, Rosinha G2, Roxo 90, Rudá, Safira, Tarumã, and Xamego. Plants of resistant dry bean cultivars (IAC Carioca Aruã, IAC Carioca Akytã, and IAC Carioca Pyatã) had a smaller reduction of shoot dry weight than susceptible cultivars (IAC Carioca and Pérola) when inoculated with C. flaccumfaciens pv.
The control of mono‐articular muscles in multijoint leg extensions in man.

1. Movements often require control of direction and a magnitude of force exerted externally on the environment. Bi‐articular upper leg muscles appear to play a unique role in the regulation of the net torques about the hip and knee joints, necessary for the control of this external force. 2. The aim of this study was to test the hypothesis that the mono‐articular muscles act as work generators in powerful dynamic leg extensions, which means that they should be activated primarily in the phases during which they can contribute to work, irrespective of the net joint torques required to control the external force. 3. Cycling movements of six trained subjects were analysed by means of inverse dynamics, yielding net joint torques as well as activity patterns and shortening velocities of four mono‐ and four bi‐articular leg muscles. 4. The results show that the mono‐articular muscles exert force only in the phase in which these muscles shorten, whereas this appears not to be the case for the bi‐articular muscles. 5. Reciprocal patterns of activation of the rectus femoris and hamstring muscles appear to tune the distribution of net joint torques about the hip and knee joints, necessary to control the (changing) direction of the force on the pedal. 6. An analysis of running in man and additional related literature based on animal studies appears to provide further support for the hypothesis that mono‐ and bi‐articular muscles have essentially different roles in these powerful multijoint leg extension tasks.
The role of the hippocampus in mediating emotional responses to nicotine and cannabinoids: a possible neural substrate for functional interactions

The endocannabinoid system is involved in the regulation of behavioural and physiological stress-related responses. Nicotine exerts complex effects on emotional behaviour, and its withdrawal may result in depressive and anxiogenic-like symptoms. Cannabinoid receptor agonists and nicotine induce biphasic effects in diverse tests of unconditioned anxiety, alter adrenocortical activity and affect hippocampus-dependent contextual fear conditioning. Upon exposure to stressful stimuli, central endocannabinoid and cholinergic systems appear to be activated in key limbic areas such as hippocampus and amygdala, which might contribute to adaptive cognitive and emotional strategies to cope with aversive situations. Numerous studies indicate the existence of functional interactions between nicotine and cannabinoids, particularly in relation to anxiety-related processes. An overlapping distribution of CB1 and nicotinic acetylcholine receptors in the hippocampus is observed and the endocannabinoid system exerts a modulatory role over the hippocampal cholinergic system. In this review, we point to the hippocampus as a relevant neural substrate for cannabinoid–nicotine interactions, notably as regards emotional responses. After a general description of the cannabinoid and nicotinic systems, we review their implications in unconditioned anxiety, depressive-like behaviour and fear conditioning. Then we discuss the role of both systems in modulating stress-induced changes at cellular, endocrine and behavioural levels and their possible involvement in hippocampal neurogenesis. Although we mainly focus on animal data, some relevant human studies are also discussed.
Fingerprint Feature Extraction Using Midpoint ridge Contour method and Neural Network

Automatic minutiae detection is an extremely critical process especially in low quality fingerprints. Most automatic systems for fingerprint comparison are based on minutiae matching. Minutiae are essentially terminations and bifurcations of the ridge lines that constitute a fingerprint pattern. A minutia extraction approach has been presented using the midpoint ridge contours. Our method do not requires thinning of fingerprint image but it can work with actual size ridges as it has been acquired. On the fingerprint image segmentation, normalization and contrast enhancement operations are required to be perform for clear identification of minutiae points. Color coding scheme has been used so that each ridge line should be scanned only once. Feature point locations that are being identified by midpoint ridge contours method are stored and passed to multi layer Perceptron trained with backpropagation algorithm. The result achieved is compared with those obtained through a method based on image thinning. The method proposed takes less time and do not detect any false minutiae.
Register transfer modeling and simulation for array processors

This paper presents a register transfer modeling scheme for array processor simulation. Its main goals are to verify the application specific design by real data computation, and to help fine tune the array architecture by precise timing analysis. The data flow graph of the design is translated into a register transfer language which is further combined with a hardware description module. An interactive simulator SISim v2.0 has been implemented to simulate the behavior of such a system. The results are compared with the expected valves to verify the array processor design. The recorded timing information can help the designer to analyze the system and improve the performance and resource utilization. <<ETX>>
MRI-fusion biopsy: the contemporary experience

Advancements in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and MRI-ultrasound (US)-fusion targeted biopsy have resulted in a paradigm shift in the diagnosis of prostate cancer by overcoming the limitations of systematic biopsy. Prebiopsy MRI and MRI-US-fusion biopsy results in an increased detection of clinically significant disease, reduction in the detection of indolent disease, and allows for tumor localization during targeted biopsy. With these advantages, we have adopted a prebiopsy MRI and MRI-US-fusion biopsy diagnostic care pathway for all men at risk for prostate cancer and have performed more than 1900 biopsies to date. Herein we present our institutional development of MRI-US-fusion biopsy and highlight our results in those men who have had a previous negative biopsy, no prior biopsy, and those with a prior cancer diagnosis who may be candidate for active surveillance. Risk stratification with biomarkers and nomograms may allow for further counseling on the need for biopsy and the risk of harboring clinically significant disease.
An Intraindividual Study of the Characteristics of Erythema Induced by Bath and Oral Methoxsalen Photochemotherapy and Narrowband Ultraviolet B ¶

We compared the characteristics of psoralen and ultraviolet A (PUVA) erythema in skin photosensitized by bath or oral methoxsalen in 20 subjects. Erythema was assessed visually and with a reflectance instrument at 24 h intervals for 7 days. In addition, narrowband ultraviolet B (TL‐01 UVB) erythema was examined in 19 of these subjects at 4, 8, 12, 24, 48 and 72 h and in another nine subjects at 12, 15, 18, 21 and 24 h. Both bath and oral PUVA exhibited broad erythemal peaks beyond 72 h. For topical PUVA the lowest minimal phototoxic dose (MPD) occurred at 120 and 144 h (P= 0.01 and 0.03 compared with 72 h). Oral PUVA erythema peaked earlier at 96 h: the MPD was significantly lower at 96, 120 and 144 h compared with 72 h (P= 0.001, 0.01 and 0.02, respectively). At 120 h, bath PUVA had a significantly steeper slope compared with oral PUVA. The TL‐01 UVB minimal erythema dose was significantly lower at 12 h compared with 24 h (P= 0.019). The majority of subjects were at maximal erythema at 12 h (22 of 28) and 15 h (eight of nine). Our results suggest that peak erythema for bath PUVA, oral PUVA and TL‐01 UVB occurs at 120, 96 and 12–15 h, respectively.
Contributions à la résolution des processus décisionnels de Markov centralisés et décentralisés: algorithmes et théorie. (Contributions to solving Markov decision processes centralized and decentralized: algorithms and theory)

Cette these porte sur les problemes de prise de decisions sequentielles sous incertitudes dans un systeme mono ou multi-agents. Les processus decisionnels de Markov offrent un modele mathematique permettant a la fois de formaliser et de resoudre de tels problemes. Il existe de multiple travaux proposant des techniques efficaces pour la resolution des processus decisionnels de Markov. Neanmoins, trois facteurs, dits maledictions, limitent grandement le passage a l'echelle de ces techniques. Le premier facteur, la malediction de la dimension, est le plus connu. Il lie la complexite des algorithmes au nombre d'etats du systeme dont la croissance est exponentielle en fonction des attributs des etats. Le second facteur, la malediction de l'historique, a ete identifie plus recemment. Il lie la complexite des algorithmes a la dimension exponentielle de l'espace des historiques a prendre en compte afin de resoudre le probleme. Enfin, le dernier facteur, la malediction de la distributivite, est identifie dans cette these. Il lie la complexite des algorithmes a la contrainte du controle distribue d'un systeme, resultant sur une complexite doublement exponentielle. A travers nos contributions, nous proposons une reponse a chacune des trois maledictions. Nous attenuons a la fois la malediction de la dimension et la malediction de l'historique en exploitant les dependances causales soit entre etats soit entre historiques. Suivant cette idee, nous proposons une famille d'algorithmes exacts et approximatifs, nommee programmation dynamique topologique, visant a resoudre les processus decisionnels de Markov completement ou partiellement observables. Ces algorithmes permettent de reduire considerablement le nombre de mises a jour d'un etat ou d'un historique. Ainsi, lorsque les problemes sont munis d'une structure topologique, la programmation dynamique topologique offre une solution efficace. Pour pallier aux effets de la malediction de la distributivite, nous avons propose d'etendre la planification centralisee au cadre du controle distribue. Nous proposons une analyse formelle des problemes de controle distribue des processus decisionnels de Markov sous le regard de la planification centralisee. De cette analyse, de nombreux algorithmes de planification centralisee ont vu le jour. Parmi eux, figure point-based incremental pruning (PBIP), l'algorithme approximatif pour la resolution des processus de Markov decentralises, le plus efficace a ce jour.
Theoretical analysis of inverse weibull distribution

In this study we present the theoretical analysis of Inverse weibull distribution. This paper presents the flexibility of the Inverse weibull distribution that approaches to different distributions. Here we compare the relevant parameters such as shape, scale parameters by using simulation analysis. Here we present the relationship between shape parameter and other properties such as mean, median, mode, variance, coefficient of variation, coefficient of skewness and coefficient of kurtosis models are shown graphically and mathematically presented.
Angiotensin I converting enzyme inhibitory activity and antihypertensive effect in spontaneously hypertensive rats of cobia (Rachycentron canadum) head papain hydrolysate

Cobia head protein hydrolysate (CHPH) with angiotensin I converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitory activity was prepared with papain. The 3 kDa ultrafiltration filtrate CHPH-IV of the hydrolysate exerted a potent ACE inhibitory activity with IC50 being 0.24 mg/mL. The fractions with molecular weight located between 1749 Da and 173 Da represented up 66.96% of CHPH-IV, and those between 494 Da and 173 Da represented up 31.37% of CHPH-IV. It was found that the ACE inhibitory activity of CHPH-IV was intensified from IC50 0.24 mg/mL to 0.17 mg/mL after incubation with gastrointestinal proteases. The CHPH-IV significantly decreased the systolic blood pressure in a dose-dependent manner after oral administration to spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHR) at dose of 150 mg/kg, 600 mg/kg and 1200 mg/kg body weight. These results suggested that CHPH-IV from cobia head protein hydrolysate by papain could serve as a source of peptides with antihypertensive activity in functional food industry.