Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A global approach to HIV-1 vaccine development

A global human immunodeficiency virus‐1 (HIV‐1) vaccine will have to elicit immune responses capable of providing protection against a tremendous diversity of HIV‐1 variants. In this review, we first describe the current state of the HIV‐1 vaccine field, outlining the immune responses that are desired in a global HIV‐1 vaccine. In particular, we emphasize the likely importance of Env‐specific neutralizing and non‐neutralizing antibodies for protection against HIV‐1 acquisition and the likely importance of effector Gag‐specific T lymphocytes for virologic control. We then highlight four strategies for developing a global HIV‐1 vaccine. The first approach is to design specific vaccines for each geographic region that include antigens tailor‐made to match local circulating HIV‐1 strains. The second approach is to design a vaccine that will elicit Env‐specific antibodies capable of broadly neutralizing all HIV‐1 subtypes. The third approach is to design a vaccine that will elicit cellular immune responses that are focused on highly conserved HIV‐1 sequences. The fourth approach is to design a vaccine to elicit highly diverse HIV‐1‐specific responses. Finally, we emphasize the importance of conducting clinical efficacy trials as the only way to determine which strategies will provide optimal protection against HIV‐1 in humans.
The relationship between command hallucinations and violence.

OBJECTIVE The purpose of this study was to describe the relationship between command hallucinations and violent behavior. METHODS One hundred and three psychiatric inpatients completed measures of command hallucinations, other psychotic symptoms, violent behavior, and social desirability response biases. RESULTS Thirty percent of the patients reported having had command hallucinations to harm others during the last year, and 22 percent of the patients reported they complied with such commands. Logistic regression analyses suggested that patients who experienced command hallucinations to harm others were more than twice as likely to be violent, even when the analysis controlled for demographic variables, history of substance abuse, and social desirability response biases. CONCLUSIONS The results support the clinical utility of asking about command hallucinations when assessing the risk of violence in patients with major mental disorders.
A COMPARISON OF LOW-DOSE INHALED BUDESONIDE PLUS THEOPHYLLINE AND HIGH-DOSE INHALED BUDESONIDE FOR MODERATE ASTHMA

A BSTRACT Background Inhaled glucocorticoids and oral theophylline are widely used to treat asthma. We compared the benefits of adding theophylline to inhaled glucocorticoid with those of doubling the dose of inhaled glucocorticoid in patients with persistent symptoms despite the use of inhaled glucocorticoid. Methods In a double-blind, placebo-controlled trial, we randomly assigned 62 patients to receive either 400 m g of inhaled budesonide (low-dose budesonide) with 250 or 375 mg of theophylline (depending on body weight) or 800 m g of inhaled budesonide (high-dose budesonide). All doses were given twice daily for three months. Lung function was measured serially, and patients kept records of peak expiratory flow, symptoms, and albuterol use. The effects of treatment on endogenous cortisol levels were also assessed. Results Both treatments resulted in improvements in lung function that were sustained throughout the study. As compared with treatment with high-dose budesonide, treatment with low-dose budesonide plus theophylline resulted in greater improvements in forced vital capacity (P 0.03) and forced expiratory volume in one second (P 0.03). There were significant and similar reductions in b 2 -agonist use and the variability of peak expiratory flow, a correlate of bronchial hyperresponsiveness and the severity of asthma. Serum cortisol concentrations were significantly reduced in the group given high-dose budesonide (from a mean [ SE] of 18.4 2.4 m g per deciliter to 15.9 2.1 m g per deciliter, P 0.02) but were unchanged in the other group. The median serum theophylline concentration was 8.7 m g per milliliter (therapeutic range, 10 to 20) among those who received theophylline. Both treatments were well tolerated. Conclusions For patients with moderate asthma and persistent symptoms, low-dose inhaled budesonide with theophylline and high-dose inhaled budesonide produced similar benefits. Effects were achieved at theophylline concentrations below the recommended therapeutic range. The addition of low-dose theophylline to inhaled glucocorticoid may be preferable to and cheaper than increasing the dose of inhaled glucocorticoid. (N Engl J Med 1997; 337:1412-8.)
Systemic Effects of Inhaled Corticosteroids: An Overview

Inhaled corticosteroids (ICS) are common medications, used in respiratory medicine for controlling conditions such as asthma and other obstructive airway diseases. The systemic effects of oral corticosteroids are well known and established; inhaled steroids have been known to cause relatively minor and localized adverse effects such as oral candidiasis. However, less attention has been paid to their systemic effects. Although currently there is a paucity of prospective studies demonstrating the systemic effects of inhaled corticosteroids, there are numerous retrospective studies adding evidence to this link. Inhaled corticosteroids can affect the hypothalamo-pituitary-adrenal axis, bone density and growth, eyes, skin and immunity including an increased risk of pneumonia. Clinicians are recommended to aim for the lowest possible dose to avoid these systemic side effects. Fluticasone is more likely to cause systemic effects compared to budesonide. Newer ICS molecules such as ciclesonide may be more beneficial in reducing such systemic complications on prolonged use. This paper provides an updated overview of the common systemic effects encountered with ICS treatment.
THE METABOLISM OF GAMMA AMINOBUTYRIC ACID IN THE LOBSTER NERVOUS SYSTEM

γ-aminobutyric acid (GABA) is the inhibitory transmitter compound at the lobster neuromuscular junction. This paper presents a comparison of the enzymes of GABA metabolism in single identified inhibitory and excitatory axons from lobster walking legs. Inhibitory axons contain more than 100 times as much glutamic decarboxylase activity as do excitatory axons. GABA-glutamic transaminase is found in both excitatory and inhibitory axons, but about 50% more enzyme is present in inhibitory axons. The kinetic and electrophoretic behavior of the transaminase activity in excitatory and inhibitory axons is similar. Succinic semialdehyde dehydrogenase is found in both axon types, as is an unknown enzyme which converts a contaminant in radioactive glutamic acid to GABA. In lobster inhibitory neurons, therefore, the ability to accumulate GABA ultimately rests on the ability of the neuron to accumulate the enzyme glutamic decarboxylase.
THE EVIDENCE OF NON N-GLYCAN LINKED MANNOSE IN EXOCHITINASE (42 kDa) FROM Trichoderma harzianum BIO10671 GLYCOSYLATION

Chitinase 42 kDa produced by Trichoderma harzianum has been proven as a prime compound to be excreted onto the hyphae of the pathogen causing localised cell wall lysis at the point of interaction. This finally initiate the process of the host cell becomes empty of cytoplasm, disintegrates and shows a rapid collapse. This study investigates the existence of N-glycan linked mannose in chitinase 42 kDa produced by the Malaysian T. harzianum strain BIO10671. The chitinase 42 kDa from T. harzianum BIO10671 was initially purified using anion exchange chromatography prior to a series of experiments such as immunoblotting against the chitinase 42 kDa antibody, lectin staining for detecting any terminal linked mannose, and galactofuranose detection to determine the presence of galatofuranose components in glycoproteins. The enzyme purification harvested about 12-fold of chitinase 42 kDa from T. harzianum BIO10671 with strong indication of the presence chitinase 42 kDa presence on SDS-Page. This was confirmed by immunoblotting with a strong response around 42 kDa after overnight incubation in chitinase 42 kDa antibody suggesting that the gene for chitinase 42 kDa was greatly expressed in this strain. There are no intervation of galatofuranose on any of the terminal mannose in chitinase 42 kDa as shown by negative results on samples treated with or without endoglycosidase-H and lectin staining. Therefore, it can be concludeed that glycosylation occurred in the chitinase 42 kDa from T. harzianum 42 kDa was not in the form of N-glycan linked mannose as expected.
Triangulations of surfaces

Triangulation is a convenient tool to consider when we are determining some properties of a topological space. Specifically, we can compute the homology and cohomology groups using the simplicial homology and cohomology of the triangulated space which is much easier than involving more complicated theories. In this paper, we will review the standard proof by Radó of the existence of triangulation of the surfaces, which Ahlfors and Sario introduced in the book Riemann Surfaces [3].
Language-independent text retrieval with the EuroWordNet Multilingual Semantic Database

The EC-funded EuroWordNet (EWN) project aims to build a multilingual database coding basic semantic relations between words for some European Languages (Dutch, Italian, Spanish and English) resembling Princeton WordNet 1.5. In addition to the relations in WordNet 1.5, EWN includes domain labels, cross-category and crosslanguage relations, which are directly useful for multilingual information retrieval. The multilingual structure of the database is given by an InterLingual Index that can be used for language-independent indexing of documents and queries in an information retrieval system. We explore a possible application to cross-language text retrieval based on such conceptual indexing, as an interesting alternative to knowledge-based query expansions and corpus-based approaches such as Cross-Language Latent Semantic Indexing.
Leveraging the trade-off between spatial reuse and channel contention in wireless mesh networks

Performance optimization strategies in wireless mesh networks have witnessed many diverged directions, out of which the recent studies have explored the use of spatial multiplexing through data rate and transmit power adaptation to increase spatial re-usability while minimizing network interference. However, joint data rate and transmit power adaptation shows a clear trade-off, where higher transmit power helps in sustaining high achievable data rates with the cost of increased interference to the neighboring receiver nodes. Such a tradeoff results in channel access unfairness among contending flows, where a node with high transmit power gains more performance benefit compared to its neighbors. Unfairness among nodes in a mesh network results in performance drops for the end-to-end flows. In this paper, we formulate a multivariate optimization problem to maximize network utilization and fairness, while minimizing average transmit power for all transmitter nodes. The Pareto optimality nature of the vector optimization has been explored to design a distributed localized heuristic where every node individually decides their scheduling slots and transmit power while keeping fairness as a constraint. The performance of the proposed scheme has been evaluated through simulation, and the comparisons with recent studies reveal that it improves fairness that results approximately 10% - 40% improvement in end-to-end throughput for different network and traffic scenarios.
Unexpected Accompaniment: Cognitive Mechanisms for Language-Music Mismatch in Time

Extensive research has been carried out for the role played by anticipation in human cognition (Brône 2012; Coulson 2005; Huron 2006). Employing the terms “anticipation” and “expectation” interchangeably, these studies emphasize only the temporal sequentiality between elements taking place at different points in time, a relation parallel to the progression of time. In modes of communication where simultaneous events are possible, however, there exists a similar but distinct relation between elements simultaneously represented in time. This is expectation, a relation perpendicular to the progression of time. Ubiquitous and indispensable for our understanding of the most ordinary, the relation of expectation has hardly been recognized let alone analyzed in the literature. In view of this, in the present study I contemplate on the nature of expectation, identifying and integrating in a coherent way theoretical
Interleaved factorial non-homogeneous hidden Markov models for energy disaggregation

To reduce energy demand in households it is useful to know which electrical appliances are in use at what times. Monitoring individual appliances is costly and intrusive, whereas data on overall household electricity use is more easily obtained. In this paper, we consider the energy disaggregation problem where a household's electricity consumption is disaggregated into the component appliances. The factorial hidden Markov model (FHMM) is a natural model to fit this data. We enhance this generic model by introducing two constraints on the state sequence of the FHMM. The first is to use a non-homogeneous Markov chain, modelling how appliance usage varies over the day, and the other is to enforce that at most one chain changes state at each time step. This yields a new model which we call the interleaved factorial non-homogeneous hidden Markov model (IFNHMM). We evaluated the ability of this model to perform disaggregation in an ultra-low frequency setting, over a data set of 251 English households. In this new setting, the IFNHMM outperforms the FHMM in terms of recovering the energy used by the component appliances, due to that stronger constraints have been imposed on the states of the hidden Markov chains. Interestingly, we find that the variability in model performance across households is significant, underscoring the importance of using larger scale data in the disaggregation problem.
Human Torovirus: A New Nosocomial Gastrointestinal Pathogen

Abstract Studies were undertaken to determine if human torovirus is associated with gastroenteritis and to examine the clinical features of torovirus illness in children. The fecal excretion of torovirus in patients with gastroenteritis was compared with that in matched asymptomatic controls in a case-control study. Toroviruses were identified in 72 (35.0%) of 206 gastroenteritis cases compared with 30 (14.5%) of 206 controls (P < .001). Clinical features of torovirus gastroenteritis in 172 patients positive for torovirus were compared with those of 115 patients infected with rotavirus or astrovirus. Persons infected with torovirus were more frequently immunocompromised (43.0% vs. 15.7%) and nosocomially infected (57.6% vs. 31.3%). They also experienced less vomiting (46.4% vs. 66.7%) but had more bloody diarrhea (11.2% vs. 1.8%). An antibody response to torovirus developed mainly in older, nonimmunocompromised children (P < .01). These studies demonstrate an association between torovirus excretion and gastroenteritis in the pediatric population among immunocompromised hospitalized patients and in previously healthy patients.
When Money Makes Employees Warm and Bright: Thoughts of New Money Promote Warmth and Competence

ABSTRACT Warmth and competence are two important dimensions that facilitate career success (e.g., building relationships, providing novel solutions to problems). We investigated how situational reminders of money affect warmth and competence. Specifically, we propose that reminders of new (vs. used) money increase people's warmth and competence. In five studies of working adults, inducing participants to think about new (vs. used) banknotes promoted creative idea generation (Study 1) (reflecting competence), increased concern for coworkers (Study 2), decreased self-serving behavior (Study 3), and increased helping intentions (Study 5) and behavior (Study 4) (reflecting warmth). Study 4 showed that the effect of priming new money on warmth occurs by activating a norm of social conscientiousness. Our findings suggest that money's appearance can impact problem solving, prorelationship behavior, and perceived norms. We discuss implications for research on money, norm salience, and organizational behavior.
A versatile setup for semiconductor testing up to 550/spl deg/C

We describe a novel setup designed for measuring semiconductor devices at temperatures up to 550/spl deg/C and report on some promising early measurements of a 1 /spl mu/m MOSFET in the range from room temperature to 400/spl deg/C. The high-temperature setup comprises a custom built, vacuum tight tube oven, a motor driven loading system, and a specially designed sample holder. Our first measurements demonstrate the reliability of our new method to contact the sample trough a ceramic substrate used as an interconnect between spring loaded pins and the micro-chip.
Implementation of Customized FindBugs Detectors

There are a lot of static code analysis tools to automatically find program errors. Traditional techniques usually involve formal methods and complicated computations, and thus suffer from poor extendibility and performance. FindBugs was developed to address these issues. The system is based on the concept of bug patterns, which are claimed to be easy to implement and effective to discover real bugs. In order to evaluate the system in terms of these two aspects, we experimented in creating and using a custom detector from resources provided by in the FindBugs package.
Three Avatars Walk into a Bar : Defining and Evaluating Realism for Virtual Supporting Characters

Convincing and compelling virtual environments that are populated with rich characters demand consistent, nuanced, and realistic behavior that is integrated in the surrounding environment. We introduce the concept of Supporting Character Realism (SCR) for virtual avatars by identifying the capabilities of agents which have the ability to work in tandem with traditional “main character realism” approaches by demonstrating consistent and nuanced behaviors that blend into the surrounding background environment. Next, we propose several metrics for evaluating agents attempting to achieve this level of realism and test our proposed metrics in a social interaction experiment set in a virtual bar amidst a variety of human and computer controlled patrons. Finally, we employ these metrics to measure the SCR performance of traditional scripted bots and prototype AI-driven agents. Our results show that SCR is not only a distinguishable and measurable metric of agent realism, but also a technically achievable goal within the reach of modern AI techniques.
Improved optimal seam selection blending for fast video stitching of videos captured from freely moving devices

We investigate the problem of stitching timely synchronized video streams captured by freely moving devices. Recently, it was shown that using frame-to-frame correlation can greatly enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of video stitching algorithms [19]. In this paper, we address some of the shortcomings in [19], namely the simple blending approach, causing almost a third of stitching errors and the fact that the stitching algorithm is only tested on a frame-by-frame basis which does not realistically mimic the user perception of the output system quality as a complete video. We propose the use of a modified blending technique based on optimal seam selection and experimentally validate its superiority using precision, recall and F1 measures on a frame-by-frame basis, while maintaining low computational complexity. Furthermore, we validate that the performance gains measured on a frame-by-frame basis are also evident when the stitched video output is evaluated as a single unit.
Cloning and Functional Characterization of a Brassica napus Transporter That Is Able to Transport Nitrate and Histidine*

A full-length cDNA for a membrane transporter was isolated from Brassica napus by its sequence homology to a previously cloned Arabidopsis low affinity nitrate transporter. The cDNA encodes a predicted protein of 589 amino acid residues with 12 putative transmembrane domains. The transporter belongs to a multigene family with members that have been identified in bacteria, fungi, plants, and animals and that are able to transport a range of different nitrogen-containing substrates, including amino acids, peptides, and nitrate. To identify the substrates of this plant gene, we have expressed the protein in Xenopus oocytes. The properties of the transporter are consistent with a proton cotransport mechanism for nitrate, and the voltage dependence of theK m for nitrate was determined. TheK m for nitrate was shown to increase from 4 to 14 mm as the membrane voltage became more negative from −40 to −180 mV. Oocytes expressing the gene could accumulate internal nitrate to concentrations higher than those measured in water-injected controls. A range of different substrate molecules for the transporter was tested, but of these, histidine gave the largest currents, although the affinity was in the millimolar range. The pH dependence of the activity of the transporter was different for the substrates, with histidine transport favored at alkaline and nitrate at acid external pH. Kinetic analysis of the mechanism of histidine transport suggests a cotransport of protons and the neutral form of the amino acid, with theK m for histidine decreasing at more negative membrane voltages. This gene is the first member of this family of transporters for which the transport of two very different types of substrate, nitrate and histidine, has been demonstrated.
Nitric oxide, antioxidants and prooxidants in plant defence responses

In plant cells the free radical nitric oxide (NO) interacts both with anti- as well as prooxidants. This review provides a short survey of the central roles of ascorbate and glutathione—the latter alone or in conjunction with S-nitrosoglutathione reductase—in controlling NO bioavailability. Other major topics include the regulation of antioxidant enzymes by NO and the interplay between NO and reactive oxygen species (ROS). Under stress conditions NO regulates antioxidant enzymes at the level of activity and gene expression, which can cause either enhancement or reduction of the cellular redox status. For instance chronic NO production during salt stress induced the antioxidant system thereby increasing salt tolerance in various plants. In contrast, rapid NO accumulation in response to strong stress stimuli was occasionally linked to inhibition of antioxidant enzymes and a subsequent rise in hydrogen peroxide levels. Moreover, during incompatible Arabidopsis thaliana-Pseudomonas syringae interactions ROS burst and cell death progression were shown to be terminated by S-nitrosylation-triggered inhibition of NADPH oxidases, further highlighting the multiple roles of NO during redox-signaling. In chemical reactions between NO and ROS reactive nitrogen species (RNS) arise with characteristics different from their precursors. Recently, peroxynitrite formed by the reaction of NO with superoxide has attracted much attention. We will describe putative functions of this molecule and other NO derivatives in plant cells. Non-symbiotic hemoglobins (nsHb) were proposed to act in NO degradation. Additionally, like other oxidases nsHb is also capable of catalyzing protein nitration through a nitrite- and hydrogen peroxide-dependent process. The physiological significance of the described findings under abiotic and biotic stress conditions will be discussed with a special emphasis on pathogen-induced programmed cell death (PCD).
Testing the "Dark-Energy"-Dominated Cosmology via the Solar-System Experiments

According to the recent astronomical data, the most part of energy in the Universe is in the 'dark' form, which is effectively described by Lambda-term in Einstein equations. All arguments in favor of the dark energy were obtained so far from the observational data related to very large (intergalactic) scales. Is it possible to find a manifestation of the dark energy at much less scales (e.g. inside the Solar system)?