Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Safety and Immunologic Response of a Viral Vaccine to Prostate-Specific Antigen in Combination with Radiation Therapy when Metronomic-Dose Interleukin 2 Is Used as an Adjuvant

Purpose: We have previously reported on the safety and immunologic response of a poxvirus-based vaccine encoding prostate-specific antigen (PSA) used in combination with radiation therapy in patients with localized prostate cancer. We hypothesized that a “metronomic” dose of interleukin 2 (IL-2) as a biological adjuvant would cause less toxicity while maintaining immunologic response. Experimental Design: Eighteen patients with localized prostate cancer were treated in a single-arm trial using previously established doses of vaccine and radiation therapy. The vaccine used was a recombinant vaccinia virus engineered to encode PSA admixed with a recombinant vaccinia encoding the costimulatory molecule B7.1, followed by booster vaccinations with a recombinant fowlpox vector expressing PSA. Patients received a total of eight planned vaccination cycles, once every 4 weeks, with granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor given on days 1 to 4 and interleukin 2 (IL-2) at a dose of 0.6 MIU/M2 given from days 8 to 21 after each vaccination. Definitive external beam radiation therapy was initiated after the third vaccination cycle. Patients were evaluated for safety and immunologic response. Toxicity and immunologic activity were compared with the previously reported regimen containing a higher dose of IL-2. Results: Seventeen of 18 patients received all eight cycles of vaccine with IL-2. Five of eight HLA-A2+ patients evaluated had an increase in PSA-specific T cells of ≥3-fold. Toxicities were generally mild, with only seven vaccination cycles of 140 given resulting in grade 3 toxicities possibly attributable to IL-2. Conclusions: Metronomic-dose IL-2 in combination with vaccine and radiation therapy is safe, can induce prostate-specific immune responses, and has immunologic activity similar to low-dose IL-2, with markedly reduced toxicities.
Harvesting Effects, Recovery Mechanisms, and Management Strategies for a Long-Lived and Structural Precious Coral

Overexploitation is a major threat for the integrity of marine ecosystems. Understanding the ecological consequences of different extractive practices and the mechanisms underlying the recovery of populations is essential to ensure sustainable management plans. Precious corals are long-lived structural invertebrates, historically overfished, and their conservation is currently a worldwide concern. However, the processes underlying their recovery are poorly known. Here, we examined harvesting effects and recovery mechanisms of red coral Corallium rubrum by analyzing long-term photographic series taken on two populations that were harvested. We compared the relative importance of reproduction and re-growth as drivers of resilience. Harvesting heavily impacted coral populations causing large decreases in biomass and strong size-class distribution shifts towards populations dominated by small colonies. At the end of the study (after 4 and 7 years) only partial recovery was observed. The observed general pattern of low recruitment and high mortality of new recruits demonstrated limited effects of reproduction on population recovery. Adversely, low mortality of partially harvested adults and a large proportion of colonies showing new branches highlighted the importance of re-growth in the recovery process. The demographic projections obtained through stochastic models confirmed that the recovery rates of C. rubrum can be strongly modulated depending on harvesting procedures. Thus, leaving the basal section of the colonies when harvesting to avoid total mortality largely enhances the resilience of C. rubrum populations and quickens their recovery. On the other hand, the high survival of harvested colonies and the significant biomass reduction indicated that abundance may not be an adequate metric to assess the conservation status of clonal organisms because it can underestimate harvesting effects. This study highlights the unsustainability of current harvesting practices of C. rubrum and provides urgently needed data to improve management practices that are still largely based on untested assumptions.
N‐Acetyl Cysteine Treatment Restores Early Phase Fracture Healing in Ethanol‐Fed Rats

BACKGROUND Fracture healing in alcoholics is delayed and often associated with infections resulting in prolonged rehabilitation. It has been reported that binge drinking of alcohol increases oxidative stress and delays fracture healing in rats, which is prevented by treatment with the antioxidant n-acetyl cysteine (NAC). Oxidative stress is a significant factor in pathologies of various organs resulting from chronic alcoholism. Therefore, we hypothesize that treatment with NAC reduces oxidative stress and restores fracture healing in chronic alcoholics. METHODS Rats (10 months old) were pair-fed the Lieber-DeCarli ethanol (EtOH) diet or control diet for 16 weeks. A closed fracture was performed and rats allowed to recover for 72 hours. Rats were divided into 4 groups-control, control + NAC, EtOH, and EtOH + NAC-and injected intraperitoneally with 200 mg/kg of NAC daily for 3 days. Serum and bone fracture callus homogenates were collected and assayed for traditional markers of inflammation, oxidative stress, and bone regeneration. RESULTS The oxidative stress marker malondialdehyde (MDA) was increased in both serum and bone tissue in EtOH-fed animals compared to controls. NAC treatment significantly (p < 0.01) reduced MDA to near normal levels and dramatically increased the index of antioxidant efficacy (catalase/MDA ratio) (p < 0.01). Inflammatory markers tumor necrosis factor-α, interferon-γ, and interleukin-6 were significantly decreased in serum and callus following NAC treatment. NAC treatment reduced EtOH-induced bone resorption as evidenced by significant decreases in C-telopeptide of type-I-collagen levels (p < 0.05) and band-5 tartrate-resistant acid phosphatase levels in the tissue (p < 0.001). CONCLUSIONS Oxidative stress and excessive inflammation are involved in the inhibition of fracture healing by EtOH. In this study, early short-term treatment of EtOH-fed animals with the antioxidant NAC reduced oxidative stress and normalized the innate immune response to fracture in the early phase of fracture healing, thereby restoring the normal onset of bone regeneration.
Linked selection and recombination rate variation drive the evolution of the genomic landscape of differentiation across the speciation continuum of Ficedula flycatchers

Speciation is a continuous process during which genetic changes gradually accumulate in the genomes of diverging species. Recent studies have documented highly heterogeneous differentiation landscapes, with distinct regions of elevated differentiation (“differentiation islands”) widespread across genomes. However, it remains unclear which processes drive the evolution of differentiation islands; how the differentiation landscape evolves as speciation advances; and ultimately, how differentiation islands are related to speciation. Here, we addressed these questions based on population genetic analyses of 200 resequenced genomes from 10 populations of four Ficedula flycatcher sister species. We show that a heterogeneous differentiation landscape starts emerging among populations within species, and differentiation islands evolve recurrently in the very same genomic regions among independent lineages. Contrary to expectations from models that interpret differentiation islands as genomic regions involved in reproductive isolation that are shielded from gene flow, patterns of sequence divergence (dxy and relative node depth) do not support a major role of gene flow in the evolution of the differentiation landscape in these species. Instead, as predicted by models of linked selection, genome-wide variation in diversity and differentiation can be explained by variation in recombination rate and the density of targets for selection. We thus conclude that the heterogeneous landscape of differentiation in Ficedula flycatchers evolves mainly as the result of background selection and selective sweeps in genomic regions of low recombination. Our results emphasize the necessity of incorporating linked selection as a null model to identify genome regions involved in adaptation and speciation.
Electromotility in Outer Hair Cells: A Supporting Role for Fast Potassium Conductance

Motility of outer hair cells underlies the cochlear amplifier, which is critical for the ear’s sensitivity and fine tuning. Of the two motile mechanisms present in these cells, electromotility at the lateral wall depends on the receptor potential and thus depends on currents through the cell body. We found that, in the guinea pig cochlea, basal turn outer hair cells have a fast-activating ion current (τ < 0.3 ms at 23°C), which is absent in apical turn cells. This finding is consistent with our previous theoretical analysis that a fast-activating potassium current is required only in the basal turn to counteract the capacitive current and thereby to enhance the effectiveness of electromotility. Thus, our finding is consistent with the functional significance of electromotility. We conjecture therefore that the current reduces the capacitance of the outer hair cell in order to increase hearing bandwidth.
An exploratory study of career, psychosocial, and clinical mentoring of podiatrists

The benefits of mentoring in the health sector have received a great deal of attention from health management researchers. Much of this research has concentrated on doctors and nurses at pre-qualification or early career stages in their professional lives working in large organizations. Little attention has been paid to the needs of podiatrists who are often employed in multiple part time or casual roles in public sector clinics or private practices. Many podiatrists rely on a professional association to provide a mentor and continuing professional development. This study uses semi-structured interviews with mentors and mentees and template analysis, to explore three dimensions of mentoring; career, psychosocial and clinical, of podiatrists who are members of a professional association. The implications for practice, theory and further research on podiatrists and other allied health professions are discussed.
Categorising deverbal nouns based on lexical conceptual structure for analysing Japanese compounds

The paper proposes a method to describe conceptual meanings of Japanese deverbal nouns for the purpose of analysing Japanese compound nouns. A lexical meaning of each constituent word is very important since it deeply influences a word formation of compound words. Therefore, we intend to use the lexical meanings of constituent words to build a Japanese compound noun analyser. As a first step to describe lexical meanings of words, we have established a simple, semantic structure based on lexical conceptual structure (we refer to the structure we establish as TLCS). After the analysing 250 deverbal nouns that appeared in technical terms, we found that the only 14 types of TLCS cover various deverbal nouns. We explain the types of TLCS and also show the procedure of assigning TLCSs to deverbals. In order to evaluate the efficacy of TLCS, we made use of the accuracy of simple compound noun analyser for analysing technical terms. The result was very good, which shows that our proposed method is very promising.
An ID-based routing protocol for WSN

In wireless sensor network, we have 2 type of routing; one of them send data from the sensor nodes to the sink and another send some data from sink to the sensor nodes such as programming/retaking binaries, queries and commands. In this paper we present a new routing algorithm base on ID that is named ID-Leach. This protocol assigns an unique ID with binary number to each sensor nodes. This protocol evaluates by comparing Leach protocol. The evaluations show our proposal method has high energy efficiency and can improve the network lifetime.
Icelandic dative intervention: person and number are separate probes

In addition, however, there is variation within the 3 person, one variety (Icelandic C) allowing only the default 3SG form of the verb (i.e., generally disallowing agreement), another variety (Icelandic B) generally disallowing 3 person agreement with NOM across an overtly intervening DAT, and a third variety (Icelandic A), allowing many but not all instances of 3 person agreement across DAT. Thus, we find the pattern in (2a) in Icelandic A but the pattern in (2b) in Icelandic B and C:
Metaanalysis of the Performance of a Combined Treponemal and Nontreponemal Rapid Diagnostic Test for Syphilis and Yaws

A combined treponemal and nontreponemal rapid diagnostic test was found to have good sensitivity and specificity for both syphilis and yaws. The performance of both the treponemal and nontreponemal test components was strongly associated with the rapid plasma reagin titer.
Detailed comparisons of airborne formaldehyde measurements with box models during the 2006 INTEX-B and MILAGRO campaigns: potential evidence for significant impacts of unmeasured and multi-generation volatile organic carbon compounds

Detailed comparisons of airborne CH2O mea- surements acquired by tunable diode laser absorption spec- troscopy with steady state box model calculations were car- ried out using data from the 2006 INTEX-B and MILARGO campaign in order to improve our understanding of hydrocar- bon oxidation processing. This study includes comparisons over Mexico (including Mexico City), the Gulf of Mexico, parts of the continental United States near the Gulf coast, as well as the more remote Pacific Ocean, and focuses on comparisons in the boundary layer. Select previous com- parisons in other campaigns have highlighted some loca-
Contrast of medical and nonmedical use of stimulant drugs, basis for the distinction, and risk of addiction: comment on Smith and Farah (2011).

Smith and Farah (2011) presented a scholarly review of critical areas related to their intriguing title "Are Prescription Stimulants 'Smart Pills'? " We contend that they accomplished the main goal of the article, to get the facts straight about possible cognitive enhancement via the nonmedical use of stimulant drugs by individuals without a diagnosis of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). At the same time, they justified their main conclusions that (a) individuals are seeking and engaging in nonmedical use of stimulant drugs with the expectations of cognitive enhancement despite uncertainty whether such expectations are valid and (b) on some tasks, there are small average benefits of nonmedical use, but the overall pattern is not clear (e.g., small beneficial effects across most individuals or large beneficial effects only in a few individuals, both of which result in small average effects). We offer comments in 3 areas to amplify key topics mentioned but not emphasized by Smith and Farah: (a) characterization of the cognitive effects of medical use of stimulants to contrast with the cognitive effects of nonmedical use; (b) justification of medical use of stimulants by placement on a normally distributed dimension of behavior rather than categorical diagnosis of ADHD, which varies widely across countries; and (c) evaluation of the potential risks of nonmedical use to individuals and to society (e.g., the likelihood of addiction to stimulant drugs in a small minority of the population) rather than just the potential benefits of cognitive enhancement.
Purification of a Lipoprotein Lipase-Inhib iting Protein Produced by a Melanoma Cell Line Asso ciated with Cancer Cachexia

Allan et al., "Osteoblasts display receptors for and re sponses to leukemia-inhibitory factor', J. Cell. Physiol. 145:110-119 (1990). Williams et al., “Myeloid leukemia inhibitory factor maintains the developmental potential of embryonic stem cells', Nature 336:684-687 (1988). Tomida et al., "Inhibition of development of NA+ dependent hexose transport in renal epithelial LLC-Pk1 cells. for myeloid leukemic cells/leukemia inhibitory factor', FEBS 268(10:261-264 (1990). Gearing et al., "Expression cloning of a receptor for |||||||||||III
MEG 3 inhibit proliferation and metastasis of gastric cancer via p 53 signaling pathway

satisfaction, suggesting that new therapy or target should be found in the treatment of gastric cancer. lncRNAs are a kind of non-coding RNA which are more than 200 nt. Recent works3-7 have shown that lncRNA played as crucial regulators in various kinds of cancer. Zhang et al8 found that lncRNA Linp1 was overexpressed in human triple-negative breast cancer, which could enhance repair of DNA double-strand breaks by serving as a scaffold linking Ku80 and DNA-PKcs, thereby coordinating the non homologous end joining pathway, promoting metastasis of breast cancer. Similarly, Wan et al9 also observed that lncRNA Jade could transcriptionally activate the expression of Jade1, a key component of human histone acetylation complex, inducing histone H4 acetylation in DNA damage response, promoting breast tumorigenesis. Peter et al10 showed that lncRNA was crucial to corresponding more balanced changes for mRNAs in urothelial cancer; they identified 32 lncRNAs with potential roles in disease progression. Especially, they found lncRNA AB074278 was upregulated and maintained to a pro-proliferative state in cancer through potential interaction with EMP1. Takahashi et al11 reported that lncRNA ROR was highly expressed in malignant liver cancer cells, especially in hypoxic regions within tumor cell xenografts in vivo, and suppression of lncRNA ROR could lead to the decreased phosphorylation of p70S6K1, PDK1 and HIF-1α, suggesting that lncRNA ROR was a hypoxia-responsive lncRNA that is functionally related to hypoxia signaling in liver cancer. These studies have shown that lncRNA played various roles in the progression of different kinds of tumors, but the mechanism of lncRNA in cancer are far from being clear yet. Accumulating evidence has shown that lncRNA could play as either oncogenic or tumor suppressor gene12. Among these tumor suppressor lncRNAs, lncRNA MEG3 Abstract. – OBJECTIVE: lncRNA MEG3 has been reported as a tumor suppressor gene in many different kinds of cancer, but its role in gastric cancer has not been fully understood. Then, we would like to explore its mechanism in gastric cancer. PATIENTS AND METHODS: We first used qRTPCR to detect the expression of lncRNA MEG3, then CCK8 and wound healing assay were used to detect the effect of lncRNA MEG3 on gastric cancer cells. Western blot assay was used to measure the expression of p53 when lncRNA MEG3 was overexpressed. RESULTS: lncRNA MEG3 was highly expressed in the adjacent tissue, compared to the one in gastric cancer tissue. What’s more, we also found that overexpression of lncRNA MEG3 could decrease the proliferation and metastasis of gastric cancer cells. Finally, overexpression of lncRNA MEG3 could also increase the expression of p53. CONCLUSIONS: lncRNA MEG3 could inhibit the proliferation and metastasis of gastric cancer.
Quantities for assessing high photon doses to the body: a calculational approach

Tissue reactions are the most clinically significant consequences of high-dose exposures to ionising radiation. However, currently there is no universally recognized dose quantity that can be used to assess and report generalised risks to individuals following whole body exposures in the high-dose range. In this work, a number of potential dose quantities are presented and discussed, with mathematical modelling techniques employed to compare them and explore when their differences are most or least manifest. The results are interpreted to propose the average (DGRB) of the absorbed doses to the stomach, small intestine, red bone marrow, and brain as the optimum quantity for informing assessments of risk. A second, maximally conservative dose quantity (DMax) is also suggested, which places limits on any under-estimates resulting from the adoption of DGRB. The primary aim of this work is to spark debate, with further work required to refine the final choice of quantity or quantities most appropriate for the full range of different potential exposure scenarios.
Tutorial: cloud-based data stream processing

In this tutorial we present the results of recent research about the cloud enablement of data streaming systems. We illustrate, based on both industrial as well as academic prototypes, new emerging uses cases and research trends. Specically, we focus on novel approaches for (1) scalability and (2) fault tolerance in large scale distributed streaming systems. In general, new fault tolerance mechanisms strive to be more robust and at the same time introduce less overhead. Novel load balancing approaches focus on elastic scaling over hundreds of instances based on the data and query workload. Finally, we present open challenges for the next generation of cloud-based data stream processing engines.
An encounter-based social link prediction method using Bluetooth traces

This work considers the social link prediction problem in the human community. Since mobile phones with the support of wireless technologies have become an integral part of human life, mining the traces of mobile devices can help us to understand the community structure in the social network. Therefore, an encounter-based link prediction method in which we try to analyze the social relationship between subjects using Bluetooth logs is proposed. In order to evaluate the obtained social ties, a user position prediction model, that applies two machine learning techniques, with the support of the location information of strongest extracted social friends is used.
Prediction of salinity in San Francisco bay delta using neural network

We used an artificial neural network approach to predict salinity intrusion, a complex problem in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River delta in California (USA). The inputs comprise the flows from the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers, and stage data from different locations around the bay and delta region. Different neural network architectures and training algorithms were applied to this problem to find the optimal architecture to satisfy all possible scenarios. Out of all training algorithms tested, the back propagation method using the Levenberg-Marquardt algorithm was the best predictor of salinity intrusion. The neural network was composed of three layers with a hidden layer of neurons consisting of three times the number of input neurons. Predicted salinities were within ten percent of the actual salinity at the Carquinez strait (RSAC054) measured for two periods of time, April 1997 and August 1998. Two selected management scenarios consisting of increased pumping at the federal and state water projects were evaluated to determine the resulting change in salinity at Carquinez strait. Increased pumping by fifty percent resulted in an increase in salinity of twenty percent. The speed with which these predictions can be evaluated indicate that a neural network approach could be used to evaluate a large number of potential management scenarios to determine their general effects on salinity intrusion into the delta.