Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Nef Deletion in HIV-1eli Eliminates Peripheral CD4 T-Cell Loss in a Humanized BLT Mouse Model of HIV Disease

Background: Humans infected with HIV-1 containing nef gene deletions show very slow or non-progression to AIDS. Therefore, a nef-deleted HIV-1 may be useful in generating a pathogenically-attenuated candidate therapeutic HIV-1 vaccine. We have created a mutant of HIV-1eli lacking a functional nef gene. In this study we have characterized the pathogenic phenotype of this mutant in an animal model of HIV-1 disease. Methods and findings: We determined the contribution of the nef gene to replication and infectivity in cell culture and to pathogenesis in humanized BLT mice after infection with HIV-1eli, a CXCR4-tropic subtype D virus. We constructed a nef-null virus to create HIV-1eliΔnef. Human peripheral blood mononuclear cell cultures from 13 different donors were infected and viral growth was monitored for 14 days. HIV-1eli produced higher p24 levels compared to HIV-1eliΔnef, indicating lower viral replication. HIV-1eli and HIV-1eliΔnef were then used to infect humanized BLT mice. Viremia was delayed several weeks in the HIV-1eliΔnef-infected mice compared to HIV-1eli. Viremia was evident in the majority of mice infected with HIV-1eli by 3 weeks post-infection while viremia was not evident in any HIV-1eliΔnef infected mice until 7 weeks post-infection. Mice infected with HIV-1eli harbored an average of 2.94e5 ± 1.6e5 copies of viral RNA/ml in blood. In contrast, blood from mice infected with HIV-1eliΔnef harbored an average of 4.4e3 ± 4.5e3 copies of viral RNA/ml; a ~1.5-log reduction in average viremia. Flow cytometry revealed that all mice infected with HIV-1eli showed a precipitous decline in the ratio of human CD4+ to CD8+ T-cells in peripheral blood from week 1 to week 7 post-infection. In sharp contrast, none of the mice infected with HIV-1eliΔnef showed a sustained decline of CD4+ to CD8+ T-cells from week 1 to week 10 post-infection. Conclusions: We conclude that nef is necessary for high levels of viral replication both in vitro and in vivo and for depletion of peripheral CD4+ T-cells in HIV-1eli, a pathological hallmark of HIV-1 disease. We have generated and characterized a pathogenically-attenuated mutant of HIV-1eli lacking a functional nef gene in a humanized mouse model of HIV-1 disease.
A Data Driven Approach to Uncover Deficiencies in Online Reputation Systems

Online reputation systems serve as core building blocks in various Internet services such as E-commerce (e.g. eBay) and crowdsourcing (e.g., oDesk). The flaws of real-world online reputation systems were reported extensively. Users who are frustrated about the system will eventually abandon such service. However, no formal studies have explored such flaws. This paper presents the first attempt, which develops a novel data analytical framework to uncover online reputation system deficiencies from data. We develop a novel measure to quantify the efficiency of online reputation systems, i.e., ramp up time of a new service provider. We first show that inherent preferences or personal biases in assigning feedbacks (or ratings) cause the computational infeasibility in evaluating online reputation systems from data. We develop a computationally efficient randomized algorithm with theoretical performance guarantees to address this computational challenge. We apply our methodology to real-life datasets (from eBay and Google Helpouts), we discover that the ramp up time in eBay and Google Helpouts are around 791 and 1,327 days respectively. Around 78.7% sellers have ramped up in eBay and only 1.5% workers have ramped up in Google Helpouts. This small fraction and the long ramp up time (1,327 days) explain why Google Helpouts was eventually shut down in April 2015.
Land and Forest Degradation inside Protected Areas in Latin America

Using six years of remote sensing data, we estimated land and forest degradation inside 1788 protected areas across 19 countries in Latin America. From 2004–2009, the rate of land and forest degradation increased by 250% inside the protected areas, and the land and forest degradation totaled 1,097,618 hectares. Of the protected areas in our dataset, 45% had land and forest degradation. There were relatively large variations by major habitat type, with flooded grasslands/savannas and moist broadleaf forest protected areas having the highest rates of degradation. We found no association between a country’s rate of land and forest degradation inside protected areas and Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita, GDP growth, or rural population density. We found significant, but weak, associations between the rate of land and forest degradation inside protected areas and a country’s protected area system funding, the size of the protected area, and one International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) management category. Our results suggest a high degree of heterogeneity in the variables impacting land and forest degradation inside protected areas in Latin America, but that the targeting of protected area investments on a continental scale is plausible.
Determination of the binding mode for anti-inflammatory natural product xanthohumol with myeloid differentiation protein 2

It is recognized that myeloid differentiation protein 2 (MD-2), a coreceptor of toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4) for innate immunity, plays an essential role in activation of the lipopolysaccharide signaling pathway. MD-2 is known as a neoteric and suitable therapeutical target. Therefore, there is great interest in the development of a potent MD-2 inhibitor for anti-inflammatory therapeutics. Several studies have reported that xanthohumol (XN), an anti-inflammatory natural product from hops and beer, can block the TLR4 signaling by binding to MD-2 directly. However, the interaction between MD-2 and XN remains unknown. Herein, our work aims at characterizing interactions between MD-2 and XN. Using a combination of experimental and theoretical modeling analysis, we found that XN can embed into the hydrophobic pocket of MD-2 and form two stable hydrogen bonds with residues ARG-90 and TYR-102 of MD-2. Moreover, we confirmed that ARG-90 and TYR-102 were two necessary residues during the recognition process of XN binding to MD-2. Results from this study identified the atomic interactions between the MD-2 and XN, which will contribute to future structural design of novel MD-2-targeting molecules for the treatment of inflammatory diseases.
Normative growth data for the external diameters of the external and internal iliac arteries in human fetuses--an anatomical, digital and statistical study.

BACKGROUND Normative data on the diameters of the aorto-iliac segment are extremely useful in the diagnosis and monitoring of prenatal arterial variants and pathologies. OBJECTIVES The present study describes age-specific reference intervals and normal growth curves for the external diameters of the external and internal iliac arteries. MATERIAL AND METHODS Using anatomical dissection and digital-image analysis, the normal growth of the external diameters of the external and internal iliac arteries was studied in 124 spontaneously aborted human fetuses, aged 15-34 weeks. RESULTS Neither sex differences nor laterality differences were found. The external diameters of the external iliac arteries increased from 0.31 +/- 0.06 to 1.41 +/- 0.31 mm on the right, and from 0.29 +/- 0.04 to 1.37 +/- 0.24 mm on the left, and generated the following growth curves of best fit: y = 0.665 - 0.056 x Age + 0.002 x Age2 +/- 0.143 (R2 = 0.82) and y = 0.612 - 0.052 x Age + 0.002 x Age2 +/- 0.118 (R2 = 0.86), respectively. The external diameters of the internal iliac arteries were found to be statistically larger than those of the external iliac arteries (p = 0.0000). The external diameters of the internal iliac arteries ranged from 0.44 +/- 0.07 to 2.04 +/- 0.43 mm on the right, and from 0.44 +/- 0.06 to 1.83 +/- 0.43 mm on the left, and modeled the following quadratic functions: y = 1.524 - 0.127 x Age + 0.004 x Age2 +/- 0.242 (R2 = 0.74), and y = 1.391 - 0.117 x Age + 0.004 x Age2 +/- 0.220 (R2 = 0.76), respectively. The right external iliac arteries (in 71% of the cases) and the right internal iliac arteries (in 65.3% of cases) were larger in external diameter. CONCLUSIONS The values of the external diameters of the external and internal iliac arteries are independent of sex. A strong trend towards higher values for the right external and internal iliac arteries is noted. The external diameter of the internal iliac artery is nearly 1.5 times greater than that of the external iliac artery. Surprisingly, normal growth of the external diameters of the external and internal iliac arteries follows quadratic functions.
Bit-Level Load Balancing: A New Technique for Improving the Write Throughput of Deeply Scaled STT-MRAM

Emerging non-volatile memories (NVMs) have drawn significant attention as potential DRAM replacements. STT-MRAM is one of the most promising NVMs due to its relatively low write energy, high speed, and high endurance. However, STT-MRAM suffers from its own scaling problems. As the size of the access transistor is decreased to reduce the cell area, the magnitude of the switching current that is supplied to the storage element decreases. The reduced switching current significantly lengthens the switching time, which makes write throughput a significant performance bottleneck for a memory system constructed from dense STT-MRAM cells. We introduce bit-level load balancing, a new technique that mitigates the performance overhead of limited write throughput in high-density, STT-MRAM based main memories. Bit-level load balancing takes advantage of the observation that many of the bits within a row of STT-MRAM remain unchanged when performing a write. The key idea is to architect the memory system such that different columns of different rows can be simultaneously written to an STT-MRAM subarray. By interleaving in time the bit updates from multiple writes, bit level load balancing improves average system performance by 19 percent, and comes within 6 percent of the performance of a DRAM based system.
Distributed learning algorithms for scheduling games in the future smart grid

Game theory is a key analytical tool to design Demand-Side Management (DSM) systems, since it can be used to model the complex interactions among the independent actors of the smart grids. In this paper, we propose two learning algorithms to enable the players of game theoretic DSM frameworks to autonomously converge to the Nash equilibria of the game, and we evaluate their performance based on real instances of the problem.
Can Early-Type Galaxies Evolve from the Fading of the Disks of Late-Type Galaxies?

We examine whether early-type galaxies in clusters may have evolved from later types by the fading of their disks (e.g., as a result of ram pressure stripping or strangulation) or by enhancement of the bulge luminosity (e.g., due to tidal interactions and mergers). For this purpose, we compare the bulge and disk luminosities of early- and late-type galaxies and of galaxies at different radial distances from the cluster center. We find that in order for early-type galaxies, including S0, to have evolved from late-type galaxies, their bulge luminosities must have been physically enhanced. Disk-fading models cannot explain the differences observed. We then show that galaxy bulges are systematically brighter at small projected distances from the cluster center, while disk luminosities are uncorrelated with clustercentric distance. Our results suggest that bulge enhancement, not disk fading, distinguishes early- from late-type galaxies and is thus at least partially responsible for the morphology-environment relation of bright cluster galaxies.
The type III secretion injectisome, a complex nanomachine for intracellular ‘toxin’ delivery

Abstract The type III secretion injectisome is a nanomachine that delivers bacterial proteins into the cytosol of eukaryotic target cells. It consists of a cylindrical basal structure spanning the two bacterial membranes and the peptidoglycan, connected to a hollow needle, eventually followed by a filament (animal pathogens) or to a long pilus (plant pathogens). Export employs a type III pathway. During assembly, all the protein subunits of external elements are sequentially exported by the basal structure itself, implying that the export apparatus can switch its substrate specificity over time. The length of the needle is controlled by a protein that it also secreted during assembly and presumably acts as a molecular ruler.
Intranasal Administration of Recombinant Mycobacterium smegmatis Inducing IL-17A Autoantibody Attenuates Airway Inflammation in a Murine Model of Allergic Asthma

Asthma is a chronic inflammatory disorder, previous studies have shown that IL-17A contributes to the development of asthma, and there is a positive correlation between the level of IL-17A and the severity of disease. Here, we constructed recombinant Mycobacterium smegmatis expressing fusion protein Ag85A-IL-17A (rMS-Ag85a-IL-17a) and evaluated whether it could attenuate allergic airway inflammation, and further investigated the underlying mechanism. In this work, the murine model of asthma was established with ovalbumin, and mice were intranasally vaccinated with rMS-Ag85a-IL-17a. Autoantibody of IL-17A in sera was detected, and the airway inflammatory cells infiltration, the local cytokines and chemokines production and the histopathological changes of lung tissue were investigated. We found that the administration of rMS-Ag85a-IL-17a induced the autoantibody of IL-17A in sera. The vaccination of rMS-Ag85a-IL-17a remarkably reduced the infiltration of inflammatory cells and the secretion of mucus in lung tissue and significantly decreased the numbers of the total cells, eosinophils and neutrophils in BALF. Th1 cells count in spleen, Th1 cytokine levels in BALF and supernatant of splenocytes and mediastinal lymph nodes, and T-bet mRNA in lung tissue were significantly increased with rMS-Ag85a-IL-17a administration. Meanwhile, rMS-Ag85a-IL-17a vaccination markedly decreased Th2 cells count, Th2 cytokine and Th17 cytokine levels in BALF and supernatant of splenocytes and mediastinal lymph nodes, and chemokines mRNA expression in lung tissue. These data confirmed that recombinant Mycobacterium smegmatis in vivo could induce autoantibody of IL-17A, which attenuated asthmatic airway inflammation.
INTERFERON INDUCIBLE PROTEIN-10 LEVEL AND IL28B GENE POLYMORPHISM AS PREDICTORS OF THE RESPONSE TO PEGYLATED INTERFERON / RIBAVIRIN THERAPY IN EGYPTIAN HCV PATIENTS

Hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection is a major cause of chronic liver disease and hepatocellular carcinoma worldwide. The highest prevalence of HCV infection was reported to occur in Egypt. It is crucial to determine the predictors of Sustained Viral Response (SVR) to Pegylated Interferon (peg-INF) / Ribavirin (RBV) therapy in chronic HCV Egyptians, in order to select the patients who will get benefit from this costly therapy that has frequent side effects. Pretreatment serum interferon Inducible Protein-10 (IP-10) level measurement and genotyping for IL28B rs12979860 polymorphism, were carried out on 82 Egyptian chronic HCV patients receiving pegINF/ RBV dual therapy for 48 weeks. It was revealed that patients with SVR had lower baseline IP-10 level. The baseline IP-10 level with the best sensitivity and specificity for identifying SVR was 499.02 pg/ml, with 100% specificity and 82% sensitivity. Moreover, the response rates to this dual therapy were 86.2%, 52.9%, 0.0% for genotypes CC, CT, and TT of the IL28B rs12979860 polymorphism respectively. So it can be said that carriage of a C allele is favorably associated with treatment response. Also a statistically significant lower serum IP-10 baseline level was found in the homozygous carriers of favorable CC genotype as compared with carriers of CT and TT genotypes. In conclusion, baseline serum IP-10 and genotyping for IL28B rs12979860 polymorphism are of significant value in predicting the response to pegINF/ RBV dual therapy in Egyptian chronic HCV infection patients
A study on the hardware implementation for car license plate area extraction

Automatic enforcement system has been installed to prevent speeding of vehicles in Korea. This system finds registration number and informs violation to car owner analyzing picture of speeding vehicle. This paper discusses the implementation of vehicles location search hardware to search for license plate of speeding vehicle. Vehicles location search algorithm was designed considering hardware implementation. Proposed algorithm calculates vehicles and boundary of background and finds maximum value. This paper suggests processing scheme in input device of image and simulation of its performance. Proposed scheme has 20.7% speed up performance.
An agent-based design of a NL-interaction for intelligent assistance in an e-commerce scenario

The work described in this paper is comprised in the ADVICE project, which consists of the development of a new interface for a craftsmanship tools e-commerce system. One of the main aspects of the buying-selling interaction in the web is the capability of the web site of generating some kind of trust feeling in the buyer, just like a human shop assistant would do in a person-to-person interaction. Things like understanding the buyer needs, being able to give him technical advice, assisting him in the final decision are not easy things to achieve in a web selling site. Natural language (NL) techniques can play a crucial role in providing this kind of enhancements. Another good motivation to integrate natural language technology in this kind of sites is to make the interaction easy to those people less confident with the Internet or even computer technologies. Inexperienced users feel much more comfortable expressing themselves and receiving information in natural language rather than through the human standard ways. This paper is devoted to show the current state of the Natural Language Component of the Interface Agent and the Interaction Agent in the developed prototype that supports the intelligent assistance by complementing the current shop system functionality.
Community-Acquired Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus: The New Face of an Old Foe?

The burden of infections caused by community-associated methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (CA-MRSA) is increasing among different patient populations globally. As CA-MRSA has become established in healthcare facilities, the range of infections caused by them has also increased. Molecular characterization of CA-MRSA isolates obtained from different centers has revealed significant diversity in their genetic backgrounds. Although many CA-MRSA strains are still susceptible to non-β-lactam antibiotics, multiresistance to non-β-lactam agents has emerged in some clones, posing substantial problems for empirical and directed therapy of infections caused by these strains. Some CA-MRSA clones have acquired the capacity to spread locally and internationally. CA-MRSA belonging to ST80-MRSA-IV and ST30-MRSA-IV appear to be the dominant clones in the countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). The emergence of pandemic CA-MRSA clones not only limits therapeutic options but also presents significant challenges for infection control. Continued monitoring of global epidemiology and emerging drug resistance data is critical for the effective management of these infections.
ADAPTIVE KEY FRAME RATE ALLOCATION FOR DISTRIBUTED VIDEO CODING

In the context of Distributed Video Coding (DVC), rate allocation among sources represents an important problem to solve. While in the information theoretical setting of Distributed Source Coding (DSC) the statistical correlation between sources is usually assumed to be known, in practical DVC systems there is no a priori knowledge of the underlying statistics of visual data. This lack of information makes it difficult to deal with the problem of rate allocation in practical DVC codecs. In this paper we focus on the problem of how to distribute the rate between differently encoded parts of the video sequence in a DVC system. Namely, we propose an adaptive rate allocation scheme for the encoding of the key frames depending on an estimation of the local motion activity of the sequence.
Challenges and issues of ICT industry in developing countries based on a case study of the barriers and the potential solutions for ICT deployment in Iran

The impact of information and communication technologies (ICT) on enhancing the quality of services and decreasing the overall costs has been the focus of numerous studies in the last two decades. The introduction and employment of ICT in developing countries, however, has not been as fast and effective as in developed nations. In this paper, a case study is conducted regarding the existing issues and potential solutions for the ICT industry in Iran, as an example for a developing country. The study is based on interviews with a number of IT professional and government authorities. Additionally, the relevant literature to this topic is reviewed to generalize and extend the scope of the findings. This exploration is intended to identify the pertinent issues and challenges in developing countries and propose a fine-grained framework to encompass corresponding aspects and potential solutions.
Consumer Ethnocentrism: the Concept and a Preliminary Empirical Test

Casual empiricism reveals considerable variability in the attitudes and behaviors of consumers toward products imported into the U.S. from other countries. Increasingly greater number of American consumers have adopted foreignmade products, but an unknown number of consumers eschew the purchase of these imported products. The specific motivations underlying either form of behavior remain a virtually unexplored phenonemon in consumer behavior. This study addresses this issue by introducing the concept of "consumer ethnocentrism" and presenting empirical evidence from a preliminary test of the concept.
Gaussian Mixture initialization in passive tracking applications

This paper describes the approximation of a nonlinear posterior density by a Gaussian Mixture (GM). The GM is used to initialize a bank of Kalman filters. For each Gaussian term, a Kalman filter is started. The basic conditions and the quality of the approximation are discussed. Examples from different tracking applications, the multistatic tracking and passive emitter localization using TDOA measurements, are investigated. The results are discussed and compared with existing approaches. The RMS error of the estimate is used as an evaluation criterion. The performance of the Gaussian Mixture approach is analyzed in Monte Carlo simulations.
Assessing olfactory perception in young persons : a neuroscience perspective

This paper is aimed at demonstrating the correlation between a neuroscientific index the Approach/Withdrawal one (A/W), which is related to the brain performance and the level of perceived pleasantness in young subjects undergoing diverse olfactory stimuli. The above mentioned index is employed in the assessment of audio-visual stimuli, and has been hereby estimated by using the elettroencephalogram (EEG), thanks to which it has been possible to study the activity of the PreFrontal Cortex (brain region connected with the pleasantness emotion experienced during a sensorial stimulation). In order to do so, this study recorded the EEG signals from several healthy no-smokers subjects (12 males and 12 females, 25 ± 2,6 years) during the perception of 10 diverse odors. Each olfactory stimulus has returned a cerebral A/W index for every subject: the related values have been statistically compared with the appreciation numeric scores assessed by the subjects in a questionnaire. Originality and value of this research lie in the following finding: the level of pleasantness towards odorous substances is measurable by analysing the EEG signals returned when presenting such substances to a pre-determined sample. From a managerial perspective, this method represents a biasfree technique for the assessment of a perfume performance.