Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
BAFF Augments Certain Th1-Associated Inflammatory Responses1

B cell-activating factor belonging to the TNF family (BAFF; BLyS) is a critical regulator of B cell maturation and survival, and its overexpression in BAFF transgenic (Tg) mice results in the development of autoimmune disorders. BAFF also affects T cell function through binding to one of the BAFF receptors, BAFF-R. Using BAFF Tg mice, we examined a typical Th1-mediated response, the cutaneous delayed-type hypersensitivity reaction, and found a much greater degree of paw swelling and inflammation than in control mice. Importantly, delayed-type hypersensitivity scores correlated directly with BAFF levels in serum. Conversely, in a Th2-mediated model of allergic airway inflammation, BAFF Tg mice were largely protected and showed markedly reduced Ag-specific T cell proliferation and eosinophil infiltration associated with the airways. Thus, local and/or systemically distributed BAFF affects Th1 and Th2 responses and impacts on the course of some T cell-mediated inflammatory reactions. Our results are consistent with the idea that BAFF augments T cell as well as B cell responses, particularly Th1-type responses. Results in BAFF Tg mice may reflect the situation in certain autoimmune patients or virally infected individuals, because BAFF levels in blood are comparable.
On Hotheads and Dirty Harries

Recent research has shown that individuals are prepared to incur costs to punish non‐cooperators, even in one‐shot interactions. However, why would people punish non‐cooperators with no apparent benefits for the punishers themselves? This behavior is also known as altruistic punishment. When defection is discovered, an individual evaluates this act as unfair, which could result in anger. We argue that although unfairness and anger are often intertwined, it is primarily the experience of anger and not the perception of unfairness that produces altruistic punishment. We briefly present recent data in line with the hypothesis that identifies anger as the underlying mechanism of altruistic punishment. Furthermore, additional influences regarding the occurrence of altruistic punishment, e.g., intentionality of the interaction partner, the role of satisfaction, and individual differences, are discussed.
Interface cerveau-machine hybride pour pallier le handicap causé par la myopathie de Duchenne. (Hybrid brain-machine interface to palliate handicap caused by Duchenne muscular dystrophy)

La palliation du handicap moteur est la principale application actuelle des interfaces cerveau-machine (ICM). Cette these decrit une interface cerveau-machine hybride, concue specifiquement pour des patients souffrant de myopathie de Duchenne. Notre ICM hybride exploite les signaux issus de capteurs electroencephalographiques (EEG), electromyographiques (EMG), et de joysticks. Leur traitement nous permet de detecter un mouvement ou une intention de mouvement a differents niveaux de la commande motrice. Les signaux joysticks sont utilises tant que le patient est capable de les activer, puis a mesure que la motricite se degrade avec l’evolution de la maladie, l’ICM hybride prend en compte les signaux EMG et enfin les signaux EEG. Nous avons developpe une methode originale de traitement des signaux EEG, qui permet a un expert humain de selectionner les valeurs caracteristiques qui lui semblent les plus discriminantes. Les performances de cette methode ont ete evaluees sur une base de donnees qui sert de reference dans la communaute BCI, ainsi que sur des donnees que nous avons enregistrees sur des sujets sains. Notre ICM hybride permet le controle de trajectoire d’un mobile a partir de trois actions, correspondant a un mouvement ou une intention de mouvement de la main droite, de la main gauche, et des deux mains simultanement. Un degre de liberte supplementaire peut etre envisage en integrant la detection d’une intention de mouvement des pieds.
ACN9 and alcohol dependence: Family‐based association analysis in multiplex alcohol dependence families

A previous genome‐wide linkage study of alcohol dependence (AD) in the Pittsburgh‐based multiplex family study found suggestive evidence for linkage on Chromosome 7q, a region in which the ACN9 gene is located. Using the same two generation Pittsburgh family data in which linkage was found, data for a third generation was added. The expanded sample included 133 pedigrees with 995 individuals. Finer mapping was undertaken using six SNPs extending from rs1917939 to rs13475 with minor allele frequency (MAF) ≥0.15 and pair‐wise linkage disequilibrium (LD) of r2 <0.8 using the HapMap CEU population. Binary affection status, visual, and auditory P300 data were tested for family‐based association. Family‐based analyses found all six SNPs associated with affected status. Three SNPs are located upstream of the gene, two SNPs are within intron 1 and one is in Exon 4. FBAT P‐values for the six SNPs ranged between 0.05 and 0.0005. Haplotype analysis revealed one four‐SNP block formed by rs10499934, rs7794886, rs12056091, and rs13475 with an overall significant association at P = 0.0008. Analysis of visual P300 amplitude data, a known endophenotype of alcohol dependence risk, revealed a significant association for SNPs within intron 1 and exon 4 under a dominant model of transmission. Family‐based association analysis shows the ACN9 gene significantly associated with alcohol dependence and P300 amplitude variation. The potential importance of the ACN9 gene for AD risk may be related to its role in gluconeogenesis which may be involved in the regulation of alcohol metabolism. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Comparison of non-tracer and tracer methods for determination of volatile fatty acid production rate in the rumen of sheep fed on two levels of intake

The aim of the present work was to estimate volatile fatty acid (VFA) production rate in the rumen of sheep fed two levels of intake using both a tracer (TM; by isotope dilution) and a non-tracer method (NTM; by supplementary infusion) in steady-state conditions. Six wethers received a diet containing 700 g lucerne hay and 300 g ground maize/kg in eight equal meals at 3 h intervals per d. The diet (9·8 MJ metabolizable energy (ME)/kg DM) was offered at 90 % ad libitum consumption (high intake, HI) or 45 % ad libitum consumption (low intake, LI) in a 2×2 crossover design. Each sheep received five intrarumen VFA solutions infused continuously for 24 h at rates of 250 ml and 165 ml/h for the HI and LI respectively. The first infusion, considered as a control treatment (Con), consisted of a solution of [1-13C]propionate (7 mmol/d). The four other solutions were isoenergetic (1·9 MJ ME/kg DM intake) mixtures of unlabelled propionate (C3) and butyrate (C4) at different levels: 0·90 mol C4/kg DM intake; 0·60 mol C4+0·45 mol C3/kg DM intake; 0·30 mol C4+0·90 mol C3/kg DM intake; 1·35 mol C3/kg DM intake. The VFA infusions did not affect rumen fermentation of the basal diet (pH, osmotic pressure, protozoa numbers), and comparable DM digestibility of the diet among the different treatments was observed. Both estimation methods demonstrated a similar increase (1·7-fold) in the rumen VFA production rate of sheep fed at intakes varying between 0·9 to 1·7 times maintenance. Irrespective of the intake level, the rumen production rate of individual VFA was on average 1·5-fold higher when estimated by the TM compared with the NTM. Rumen VFA production rates estimated by the NTM and TM represented 80 % and 120 % ME intake respectively. The difference between NTM and TM estimates seems likely to be caused mainly by overestimation of the VFA production rates by the TM.
Direction of Arrival in Smart Antenna using different types of Uniform Array Configuration

Antennas, so far a neglected component in wireless mobile communications, have gained a renewed interest among researchers. In the form of “smart antennas” or “adaptive array antennas”, they meet the challenging demand and bring many benefits to the wireless communications services. Until now, the investigation of smart antennas suitable for wireless communication systems has involved primarily uniform linear arrays (ULA). Different algorithms have been proposed for the estimation of the direction of arrivals (DOAs) of signals arriving to the array and several adaptive techniques have been examined for the shaping of the radiation pattern under different constraints imposed by the wireless environment. Smart antennas so far, little attention has been paid to other array topologies. In this, the performance of different types of uniform array configuration like circular, planar and planar circular have been analyzed and compared for the estimation of direction of arrival of the signal.
A highly regular multi-phase reseeding technique for scan-based BIST

In this paper a novel reseeding architecture for scan-based BIST, which uses an LFSR as TPG, is proposed. Multiple cells of the LFSR are utilized as sources for feeding the scan chain in different test phases. The LFSR generates the same state sequence in all phases, keeping that way the implementation cost low. Also, a dynamic reseeding scheme is adopted for further reducing the required hardware overhead. A seed-selection algorithm is moreover presented that, taking advantage of the multi-phase architecture, manages to reduce the number of the required seeds for achieving complete (100 %) fault coverage. Experimental results demonstrate the superiority of the proposed LFSR reseeding approach over the already known reseeding techniques.
A DFE Receiver With Equalized VREF for Multidrop Single-Ended Signaling

In this brief, decision-feedback equalization (DFE) receiver for multidrop single-ended signaling is described. The proposed DFE receiver adopts a reference voltage having equalization information to remove channel intersymbol interference. It uses a smaller number of DFE tap elements than the conventional DFE receiver for the same level of equalization, resulting in reduced power consumption and silicon area, particularly for multi-input/output interface. The proposed DFE receiver was fabricated in a 0.13- μm CMOS process, whose evaluation results indicate a reliable operation up to 3.40-Gb/s data rate with reduced power consumption.
Somatic and gastrointestinal in vivo biotransformation rates of hydrophobic chemicals in fish

To improve current bioaccumulation assessment methods, a methodology is developed, applied, and investigated for measuring in vivo biotransformation rates of hydrophobic organic substances in the body (soma) and gastrointestinal tract of the fish. The method resembles the Organisation for Economic Co‐operation and Development (OECD) 305 dietary bioaccumulation test but includes reference chemicals to determine both somatic and gastrointestinal biotransformation rates of test chemicals. Somatic biotransformation rate constants for the test chemicals ranged between 0 d–1 and 0.38 (standard error [SE] 0.03)/d–1. Gastrointestinal biotransformation rate constants varied from 0 d–1 to 46 (SE 7) d–1. Gastrointestinal biotransformation contributed more to the overall biotransformation in fish than somatic biotransformation for all test substances but 1. Results suggest that biomagnification tests can reveal the full extent of biotransformation in fish. The common presumption that the liver is the main site of biotransformation may not apply to many substances exposed through the diet. The results suggest that the application of quantitative structure‐activity relationships (QSARs) for somatic biotransformation rates and hepatic in vitro models to assess the effect of biotransformation on bioaccumulation can underestimate biotransformation rates and overestimate the biomagnification potential of chemicals that are biotransformed in the gastrointestinal tract. With some modifications, the OECD 305 test can generate somatic and gastrointestinal biotransformation data to develop biotransformation QSARs and test in vitro–in vivo biotransformation extrapolation methods. Environ Toxicol Chem 2015;34:2282–2294. © 2015 SETAC
Tracking and estimation of ego-vehicle's state for lateral localization

For urban driving, knowledge of ego-vehicle's position is a critical piece of information that enables advanced driver-assistance systems or self-driving cars to execute safety-related, autonomous driving maneuvers. This is because, without knowing the current location, it is very hard to autonomously execute any driving maneuvers for the future. The existing solutions for localization rely on a combination of Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS), an inertial measurement unit, and a digital map. However, on urban driving environments, due to poor satellite geometry and disruption of radio signal reception, their longitudinal and lateral errors are too significant to be used to guide an autonomous system. To enhance the existing system's localization capability, this work presents an effort of developing a vision-based lateral localization algorithm. The algorithm aims at reliably counting, with or without observations of lane-markings, the number road-lanes and identifying the index of the road-lane on the roadway that our vehicle happens to be driving on. Testings the proposed algorithms against inter-city and inter-state highway videos showed promising results in terms of counting the number of road-lanes and the indices of the current road-lanes.
Advanced Medical Displays: A Literature Review of Augmented Reality

The impressive development of medical imaging technology during the last decades provided physicians with an increasing amount of patient specific anatomical and functional data. In addition, the increasing use of non-ionizing real-time imaging, in particular ultrasound and optical imaging, during surgical procedures created the need for design and development of new visualization and display technology allowing physicians to take full advantage of rich sources of heterogeneous preoperative and intraoperative data. During 90's, medical augmented reality was proposed as a paradigm bringing new visualization and interaction solutions into perspective. This paper not only reviews the related literature but also establishes the relationship between subsets of this body of work in medical augmented reality. It finally discusses the remaining challenges for this young and active multidisciplinary research community.
The Effects of Interactive Whiteboards (IWBs) on Student Performance and Learning: A Literature Review

Many K-12 and higher-ed schools in both the United States and the United Kingdom have made a substantial investment in interactive whiteboard technology. Interactive whiteboards (IWBs) are generally perceived by students and teachers as a positive addition to the classroom learning environment. While there is support for links between IWBs and increases in student motivation, questions remain about the relationship between IWBs, student learning, and achievement. In this study a literature review was conducted to better understand the research to date in this area. Several common themes surfaced including the effect of IWBs on pedagogy, motivation, interaction, perception, learning, and achievement. In addition, the research suggests that these effects are related to contextual factors such as teacher training, teacher confidence, school culture, technical support, and lesson preparation and practice time. An IWB framework is suggested and directions for future research are also discussed.
Population Genetics of Streptococcus dysgalactiae Subspecies equisimilis Reveals Widely Dispersed Clones and Extensive Recombination

Background Streptococcus dysgalactiae subspecies equisimilis (SDSE) is an emerging global pathogen that can colonize and infect humans. Although most SDSE isolates possess the Lancefield group G carbohydrate, a significant minority have the group C carbohydrate. Isolates are further sub-typed on the basis of differences within the emm gene. To gain a better understanding of their molecular epidemiology and evolutionary relationships, multilocus sequence typing (MLST) analysis was performed on SDSE isolates collected from Australia, Europe and North America. Methodology/Principal Findings The 178 SDSE isolates, representing 37 emm types, segregate into 80 distinct sequence types (STs) that form 17 clonal complexes (CCs). Eight STs recovered from all three continents account for >50% of the isolates. Thus, a small number of STs are highly prevalent and have a wide geographic distribution. Both ST and CC strongly correlate with group carbohydrate. In contrast, eleven STs were associated with >1 emm type, suggestive of recombinational replacements involving the emm gene; furthermore, 35% of the emm types are associated with genetically distant STs. Data also reveal a history of extensive inter- and intra-species recombination involving the housekeeping genes used for MLST. Sequence analysis of single locus variants identified through goeBURST indicates that genetic change mediated by recombination occurred ∼4.4 times more frequently than by point mutation. Conclusions/Significance A few genetic lineages with an intercontinental distribution dominate among SDSE causing infections in humans. The distinction between group C and G isolates reflects recent evolution, and no long-term genetic isolation between them was found. Lateral gene transfer and recombination involving housekeeping genes and the emm gene are important mechanisms driving genetic variability in the SDSE population.
Beyond Transcription—New Mechanisms for the Regulation of Molecular Chaperones

Molecular chaperones are an essential part of the universal heat shock response that allows organisms to survive stress conditions that cause intracellular protein unfolding. During the past few years, two new mechanisms have been found to control the activity of several chaperones under stress conditions—the regulation of chaperone activity by the redox state and by the temperature of the environment. Hsp33, for example, is redox-regulated. Hsp33 is specifically activated by disulfide bond formation during oxidative stress, where it becomes a highly efficient chaperone holdase that binds tightly to unfolding proteins. Certain small heat shock proteins, such as Hsp26 and Hsp16.9, on the other hand, are temperature regulated. Exposure to heat shock temperatures causes these oligomeric proteins to disassemble, thereby changing them into highly efficient chaperones. The ATP-dependent chaperone folding system DnaK/DnaJ/GrpE also appears to be temperature regulated, switching from a folding to a holding mode during heat stress. Both of these novel post-translational regulatory strategies appear to have one ultimate goal: to significantly increase the substrate binding affinity of the affected chaperones under exactly those stress conditions that require their highest chaperone activity. This ensures that protein folding intermediates remain bound to the chaperones under stress conditions and are released only after the cells return to non-stress conditions.
A Fast and Effective Model for Wavelet Subband Histograms and Its Application in Texture Image Retrieval

This paper presents a novel, effective, and efficient characterization of wavelet subbands by bit-plane extractions. Each bit plane is associated with a probability that represents the frequency of 1-bit occurrence, and the concatenation of all the bit-plane probabilities forms our new image signature. Such a signature can be extracted directly from the code-block code-stream, rather than from the de-quantized wavelet coefficients, making our method particularly adaptable for image retrieval in the compression domain such as JPEG2000 format images. Our signatures have smaller storage requirement and lower computational complexity, and yet, experimental results on texture image retrieval show that our proposed signatures are much more cost effective to current state-of-the-art methods including the generalized Gaussian density signatures and histogram signatures
An efficient bitmap encoding scheme for selection queries

Bitmap indexes are useful in processing complex queries in decision support systems, and they have been implemented in several commercial database systems. A key design parameter for bitmap indexes is the <italic>encoding scheme</italic>, which determines the bits that are set to 1 in each bitmap in an index. While the relative performance of the two existing bitmap encoding schemes for simple selection queries of the form “<italic>v</italic><subscrpt>1</subscrpt> ≤ <italic>A</italic> ≤ <italic>v</italic><subscrpt>2</subscrpt>” is known (specifically, one of the encoding schemes is better for processing equality queries; i.e., <italic>v</italic><subscrpt>1</subscrpt> = <italic>v</italic><subscrpt>2</subscrpt>, while the other is better for processing range queries; i.e., <italic>v</italic><subscrpt>1</subscrpt> < <italic>v</italic><subscrpt>2</subscrpt>), it remains an open question whether these two encoding schemes are indeed optimal for their respective query classes in the sense that there is no other encoding scheme with better space-time tradeoff. In this paper, we establish a number of optimality results for the existing encoding schemes; in particular, we prove that neither of the two known schemes is optimal for the class of two-sided range queries. We also propose a new encoding scheme and prove that it is optimal for that class. Finally, we present an experimental study comparing the performance of the new encoding scheme with that of the existing ones as well as four hybrid encoding schemes for both simple selection queries and the more general class of membership queries of the form “<italic>A</italic> ∈ {<italic>v</italic><subscrpt>1</subscrpt>, <italic>v</italic><subscrpt>2</subscrpt>, . …, <italic>v<subscrpt>k</subscrpt></italic>}”. These results demonstrate that the new encoding scheme has an overall better space-time performance than existing schemes.
5-lipoxygenase and 5-lipoxygenase-activating protein are localized in the nuclear envelope of activated human leukocytes

The intracellular distribution of the enzyme 5-lipoxygenase (5-LO) and 5-lipoxygenase-activating protein (FLAP) in resting and ionophore- activated human leukocytes has been determined using immuno- electronmicroscopic labeling of ultrathin frozen sections and subcellular fractionation techniques. 5-LO is a 78-kD protein that catalyzes the conversion of arachidonic acid to leukotrienes. FLAP is an 18-kD membrane bound protein that is essential for leukotriene synthesis in cells. In response to ionophore stimulation, 5-LO translocates from a soluble to a sedimentable fraction of cell homogenates. In activated leukocytes, both FLAP and 5-LO were localized in the lumen of the nuclear envelope. Neither protein could be detected in any other cell compartment or along the plasma membrane. In resting cells, the FLAP distribution was identical to that observed in activated cells. In addition, subcellular fractionation techniques showed > 83% of immunoblot-detectable FLAP protein and approximately 64% of the FLAP ligand binding activity was found in the nuclear membrane fraction. A fractionation control demonstrated that a plasma membrane marker, detected by a monoclonal antibody PMN13F6, was not detectable in the nuclear membrane fraction. In contrast to FLAP, 5-LO in resting cells could not be visualized along the nuclear envelope. Except for weak labeling of the euchromatin region of the nucleus, 5-LO could not be readily detected in any other cellular compartment. These results demonstrate that the nuclear envelope is the intracellular site at which 5-LO and FLAP act to metabolize arachidonic acid, and that ionophore activation of neutrophils and monocytes results in the translocation of 5-LO from a nonsedimentable location to the nuclear envelope.