Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
High dose interleukin‐12 exacerbates Bordetella pertussis infection and is associated with suppression of cell‐mediated immunity in a murine aerosol challenge model

The in ‐vivo clearance of Bordetella pertussis infections in murine models in naive mice and animals vaccinated with whole‐cell vaccine is considered to be via a Th‐1‐dependent mechanism in which interleukin‐12 (IL)‐12 may play a prominent role. It has also been demonstrated clearly that the treatment of animals with macrophage‐derived IL‐12 administered with an acellular vaccine can increase the efficacy of this vaccine preparation to levels seen with the whole‐cell vaccine. However, the effects of exogenously added IL‐12 on immune responses in non‐vaccinated B. pertussis‐challenged mice remain unclear, with two studies giving contradictory findings. In this study we have treated mice with escalating doses of mIL‐12 (0·1–10 µg/mouse) prior to challenge with B. pertussis (using an aerosol challenge model of infection). The ability of mice to clear infection was assessed in IL‐12 treated and in phosphate buffered saline (PBS) control animals at days 6 and 13 post‐challenge. Lymphoid cells were isolated from spleen and cell‐mediated immune responses assessed at days 1, 6 and 13 post‐challenge. In addition, the direct effects of high‐dose IL‐12 on challenged mice was assessed by checking natural killer (NK) activity from isolated lung and spleen lymphoid cells as well as interferon‐γ (IFN‐γ ) generation from isolated cells and serum at day 1 post‐challenge. The results from this study show that bacterial colonization of the lungs is actually enhanced following treatment with high‐dose IL‐12. This is associated with impaired cellular immune responses. The mechanisms associated with the immunosuppressive effects of IL‐12 are discussed.
Detailed Behavioral Modeling of Bang-Bang Phase Detectors

In this paper, the metastability of current-mode logic (CML) latches and flip-flops is studied in detail. Based on the results of this analysis, a behavioral model of bang-bang phase detectors (BBPDs) is proposed, which is able to reliably capture the critical deadzone effect. The impact of jitter and of process, voltage and temperature variations on the BBPD behavior is also investigated. The proposed model can be used with advantage in the high-level design and verification of e.g. clock and data recovery (CDR) circuits
Investigating Variations in Gameplay: Cognitive Implications

There is increasing interest in creating computer games for learning, problem solving, and other high-level cognitive activities. When investigating whether gameplay is conducive to such activities, gameplay is often studied as a whole. As a result, cognitive implications can be linked to the game but not to its structural elements. Given that gameplay arises from interaction between the player and the game, it is the structural components of interaction that should be investigated to better understand the design of gameplay. Furthermore, minor variations in the components of interaction can have significant cognitive implications. However, such variation has not been studied yet. Thus, to gain a better understanding of how we can study the effect of interaction on the cognitive aspect of gameplay, we conducted an exploratory investigation of two computer games. These games were isomorphic at a deep level and only had one minor difference in the structure of their interaction. Volunteers played these games and discussed the cognitive processes that emerged. In one game, they primarily engaged in planning, but in the other game they primarily engaged in visualizing. This paper discusses the results of our investigation as well as its implications for the design of computer games.
Direct Search Based on Probabilistic Descent

Direct-search methods are a class of popular derivative-free algorithms characterized by evaluating the objective function using a step size and a number of (polling) directions. When applied to the minimization of smooth functions, the polling directions are typically taken from positive spanning sets, which in turn must have at least n+1 vectors in an $n$-dimensional variable space. In addition, to ensure the global convergence of these algorithms, the positive spanning sets used throughout the iterations are required to be uniformly nondegenerate in the sense of having a positive (cosine) measure bounded away from zero. However, recent numerical results indicated that randomly generating the polling directions without imposing the positive spanning property can improve the performance of these methods, especially when the number of directions is chosen as considerably less than n+1. In this paper, we analyze direct-search algorithms when the polling directions are probabilistic descent, meaning that with a certain probability at least one of them is of descent type. Such a framework enjoys almost-sure global convergence. More interestingly, we will show a global decaying rate of $1/\sqrt{k}$ for the gradient size, with overwhelmingly high probability, matching the corresponding rate for the deterministic versions of the gradient method or of direct search. Our analysis helps us understand numerical behavior and the choice of the number of polling directions.
Computing Least Fixed Points of Probabilistic Systems of Polynomials

We study systems of equations of the form X1 = f1(X1, ., Xn), . , Xn = fn(X1, ., Xn), where each fi is a polynomial with nonnegative coefficients that add up to 1. The least nonnegative solution, say mu, of such equation systems is central to problems from various areas, like physics, biology, computational linguistics and probabilistic program verification. We give a simple and strongly polynomial algorithm to decide whether mu=(1, ., 1) holds. Furthermore, we present an algorithm that computes reliable sequences of lower and upper bounds on mu, converging linearly to mu. Our algorithm has these features despite using inexact arithmetic for efficiency. We report on experiments that show the performance of our algorithms.
Face pose discrimination using support vector machines (SVM)

This paper describes an approach for the problem of face pose discrimination using support vector machines (SVM). Face pose discrimination means that one can label the face image as one of several known poses. Face images are drawn from the standard FERET database. The training set consists of 150 images equally distributed among frontal, approximately 33.75/spl deg/ rotated left and right poses, respectively, and the test set consists of 450 images again equally distributed among the three different types of poses. SVM achieved perfect accuracy-100%-discriminating between the three possible face poses on unseen test data, using either polynomials of degree 3 or radial basis functions (RBF) as kernel approximation functions.
Ijspeert locomotion Biorobotics : Using robots to emulate and investigate agile

, 196 (2014); 346 Science Auke J. Ijspeert locomotion Biorobotics: Using robots to emulate and investigate agile This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. clicking here. colleagues, clients, or customers by , you can order high-quality copies for your If you wish to distribute this article to others here. following the guidelines can be obtained by Permission to republish or repurpose articles or portions of articles ): October 23, 2014 www.sciencemag. org (this information is current as of The following resources related to this article are available online at http://www.sciencemag. org/content/346/6206/196.full. html version of this article at: including high-resolution figures, can be found in the online Updated information and services, http://www.sciencemag. org/content/346/6206/196.full. html#related found at: can be related to this article A list of selected additional articles on the Science Web sites http://www.sciencemag. org/content/346/6206/196.full. html#ref-list-1 , 34 of which can be accessed free: cites 86 articles This article http://www.sciencemag. org/cgi/collection/engineering Engineering subject collections: This article appears in the following
Poor man’s lemmatisation for automatic error classification

This publication has emanated from research supported by QTLEAP project – ECs FP7 (FP7/2007- 2013) under grant agreement number 610516: “QTLEAP: Quality Translation by Deep Language Engineering Approaches” and by a research grant from Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) under Grant Number SFI/12/RC/2289. We are grateful to the reviewers for their valuable feedbac
A Müllerian mimicry ring in Appalachian millipedes

Few biological phenomena provide such an elegant and straightforward example of evolution by natural selection as color mimicry among unrelated organisms. By mimicking the appearance of a heavily defended aposematic species, members of a second species gain protection from predators and, potentially, enhanced fitness. Mimicking a preexisting warning advertisement is economical because a potentially costly novel one can be avoided; simultaneously, the addition of more aposematic individuals enhances the overall warning effect. The better-known mimetic systems comprise tropical taxa, but here, we show a remarkable example of color mimicry in 7 species of blind, cyanide-generating millipedes endemic to the Appalachian Mountains of temperate North America. Because these millipedes lack eyes, there is no sexual selection or intraspecific signaling for coloration, providing an ideal system for mimicry studies. We document a Müllerian symbiosis where unrelated species vary in color and pattern over geographical space but appear identical where they co-occur. By using spectral color data, estimations of evolutionary history, and detailed field observations of species abundance, we test 4 predictions of Müllerian mimicry theory and begin to unravel the story of an elaborate mimetic diversification in the forests of Appalachia.
Survival of Burkholderia cepacia sepsis following lung transplantation in recipients with cystic fibrosis

E.F. Nash, A. Coonar, R. Kremer, E. Tullis, M. Hutcheon, L.G. Singer, S. Keshavjee, C. Chaparro. Survival of Burkholderia cepacia sepsis following lung transplantation in recipients with cystic fibrosis. Transpl Infect Dis 2010: 12: 551–554. All rights reserved
Configuration of Building Façade Surface for Seasonal Selectiveness of Solar Irradiation: Absorption and Reflection

A novel building facade surface configuration is proposed. This facade consists of grooved cavities that are configured in a manner that reflects summer (cooling season) insolation and absorbs winter (heating season) insolation. The effective absorptivities of the facade for various cavity reflectance characteristics, i.e., a wide range of diffuse and specular reflectance characteristics, are evaluated using a Monte Carlo model. It was determined the best cavity surface reflectivity is the one with fully diffuse surfaces and absorptivity of 0.7 or more. This reflectance characteristic of cavity results in a small depth of facade cavity and thicker divider fin between two adjacent cavities. The calculations in the present work are performed for the latitude of 41°N where both heating and cooling loads are significant. The same model can be applied to locations with different latitude which may result in slightly different cavity configurations and effective absorptivities. © 2011 ASME
Increasing Availability in Distributed Storage Systems via Clustering

We introduce the Fixed Cluster Repair System (FCRS) as a novel architecture for Distributed Storage Systems (DSS) that achieves a small repair bandwidth while guaranteeing a high availability. Specifically, we partition the set of servers in a DSS into ${s}$ clusters and allow a failed server to choose any cluster other than its own as its repair group. Thereby, we guarantee an availability of $s-1$. We characterize the repair bandwidth vs. storage trade-off for the FCRS under functional repair and show that the minimum repair bandwidth can be improved by an asymptotic multiplicative factor of 2/3 compared to the state of the art coding techniques that guarantee the same availability. Furthermore, we introduce cubic codes designed to minimize the repair bandwidth of the FCRS under the exact repair model. We prove an asymptotic multiplicative improvement of 0.79 in the minimum repair bandwidth compared to the existing exact repair coding techniques that achieve the same availability. We show that cubic codes are information-theoretically optimal for the FCRS with 2 and 3 complete clusters. A full version of this paper is accessible at: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1710.02653. pdf
Dynamic power management in environmentally powered systems

In this paper a framework for energy management in energy harvesting embedded systems is presented. As a possible example scenario, we focus on wireless sensor nodes which are powered by solar cells. We demonstrate that classical power management solutions have to be reconceived and/or new problems arise if perpetual operation of the system is required. In particular, we provide a set of algorithms and methods for different application scenarios, including real-time scheduling, application rate control as well as reward maximization. The goal is to optimize the performance of the application subject to given energy constraints. Our methods optimize the system performance which allows the usage of, e.g., smaller solar cells and smaller batteries. Our theoretical results are supported by simulations using long-term measurements of solar energy in an outdoor environment. Furthermore, to demonstrate the practical relevance of our approaches, we measured the implementation overhead of our algorithms on real sensor nodes.
Usefulness and Limitations of Skin Explants to Assess Laser Treatment

To overcome the ethical issues associated with performing clinical trials or obtaining patient’s skin tissues, there have been many attempts to develop appropriate models to study skin physiology, such as the use of skin explants to assess the effects of laser treatment. Skin explants are produced by processing skin tissue obtained from an excision. Con­ taminants and subcutaneous fat tissue are removed from the tissue, which is then cultured. Such processed tissue lacks blood circulation and nerve innervation, and is difficult to be preserved over a prolonged period of time. However, due to the similarities between skin explants and live skin tissues in terms of structure and physiological factors, such explants are thought to be useful as skin models to study the effects of laser treatment. Our previous studies showed that, following exposure to actual fractional laser, skin explants have very similar histological and molecular biological changes to those seen in the initial in vivo stages. However, with time, the differences between skin explants and live skin tissues become increasingly apparent. Therefore, skin explant models may be improved, such as by optimizing the culture conditions. In our present review, we examined the usefulness and limitations of skin explants to study the effects of laser therapy based on our own previous experience and the existing literature.
Sparsity and the truncated \(l^2\)-norm

Sparsity is a fundamental topic in highdimensional data analysis. Perhaps the most common measures of sparsity are the `norms, for 0 ≤ p < 2. In this paper, we study an alternative measure of sparsity, the truncated `-norm, which is related to other `-norms, but appears to have some unique and useful properties. Focusing on the ndimensional Gaussian location model, we derive exact asymptotic minimax results for estimation over truncated `-balls, which complement existing results for `-balls. We then propose simple new adaptive thresholding estimators that are inspired by the truncated `-norm and are adaptive asymptotic minimax over `-balls (0 ≤ p < 2), as well as truncated `-balls. Finally, we derive lower bounds on the Bayes risk of an estimator, in terms of the parameter’s truncated `-norm. These bounds provide necessary conditions for Bayes risk consistency in certain problems that are relevant for high-dimensional Bayesian modeling.
Overexpression of Glycogen Phosphorylase Increases GLUT4 Expression and Glucose Transport in Cultured Skeletal Human Muscle

Skeletal muscle glucose utilization, a major factor in the control of whole-body glucose tolerance, is modulated in accordance with the muscle metabolic demand. For instance, it is increased in chronic contraction or exercise training in association with elevated expression of GLUT4 and hexokinase II (HK-II). In this work, the contribution of increased metabolic flux to the regulation of the glucose transport capacity was analyzed in cultured human skeletal muscle engineered to overexpress glycogen phosphorylase (GP). Myocytes treated with an adenovirus-bearing muscle GP cDNA (AdCMVMGP) expressed 10 times higher GP activity and exhibited a twofold increase in the Vmax for 2-deoxy-D-[3H]glucose (2-DG) uptake, with no effect on the apparent Km. The stimulatory effect of insulin on 2-DG uptake was also markedly enhanced in AdCMVMGP- treated cells, which showed maximal insulin stimulation 2.8 times higher than control cells. No changes in HKII total activity or the intracellular compartmentalization were found. GLUT4, protein, and mRNA were raised in AdCMV-MGP-treated cells, suggesting pretranslational activation. GLUT4 was immunodetected intracellularly with a perinuclear predominance. Culture in glucose-free or high-glucose medium did not alter GLUT4 protein content in either control cells or AdCMV-MGP-treated cells. Control and GP-overexpressing cells showed similar autoinhibition of glucose transport, although they appeared to differ in the mechanism(s) involved in this effect. Whereas GLUT1 protein increased in control cells when they were switched from a high-glucose to a glucose-free medium, GLUT1 remained unaltered in GP-expressing cells upon glucose deprivation. Therefore, the increased intracellular metabolic (glycogenolytic-glycolytic) flux that occurs in muscle cells overexpressing GP causes an increase in GLUT4 expression and enhances basal and insulin-stimulated glucose transport, without significant changes in the autoinhibition of glucose transport. This mechanism of regulation may be operative in the postexercise situation in which GLUT4 expression is upregulated in coordination with increased glycolytic flux and energy demand.
Burden of chronic physical conditions and mental disorders in primary care

Background The World Health Organization (WHO) has stated that the three leading causes of burden of disease in 2030 are projected to include HIV/AIDS, unipolar depression and ischaemic heart disease. Aims To estimate health-related quality of life (HRQoL) and quality-adjusted life-year (QALY) losses associated with mental disorders and chronic physical conditions in primary healthcare using data from the diagnosis and treatment of mental disorders in primary care (DASMAP) study, an epidemiological survey carried out with primary care patients in Catalonia (Spain). Method A cross-sectional survey of a representative sample of 3815 primary care patients. A preference-based measure of health was derived from the 12-item Short Form Health Survey (SF–12): the Short Form–6D (SF–6D) multi-attribute health-status classification. Each profile generated by this questionnaire has a utility (or weight) assigned. We used non-parametric quantile regressions to model the association between both mental disorders and chronic physical condition and SF–6D scores. Results Conditions associated with SF–6D were: mood disorders, β =−0.20 (95% CI −0.18 to −0.21); pain, β = −0.08 (95%CI −0.06 to −0.09) and anxiety, β =−0.04 (95% CI −0.03 to −0.06). The top three causes of QALY losses annually per 100 000 participants were pain (5064), mood disorders (2634) and anxiety (805). Conclusions Estimation of QALY losses showed that mood disorders ranked second behind pain-related chronic medical conditions.
Assistive Technology Outcomes Research: Challenges Met and Yet Unmet

Fuhrer MJ: Assistive technology outcomes research: Challenges met and yet unmet. J Am Phys Med Rehabil 2001;80:528–535.This article highlights the special requirements, achievements, and yet unmet challenges of assessing the outcomes of assistive technology services. The current status of this research is considered from the standpoint of developmental stages that seem to characterize many areas of outcomes research. Those stages include exhortation, sober appraisal, infrastructure building, and “getting on with it. ” The status of measuring assistive technology outcomes is described, and efforts to develop new measures are critically reviewed. Three as yet unmet challenges are discussed that are faced alike by assistive technology outcomes research and by rehabilitation outcomes research in general. They are as follows: (1) operationalizing a multiple-stakeholder approach to outcomes research; (2) formulating adequate treatment theories; and (3) creating shared databases.
Systemic and Regional Hemodynamic and Cardiac Remodeling Effects of Candesartan in Dilated Cardiomyopathic Hamsters With Advanced Congestive Heart Failure

The effects of the selective angiotensin II type 1 receptor antagonist candesartan on cardiac, systemic, and regional hemodynamics and on cardiac, pulmonary, and hepatic histomorphometry were investigated in cardiomyopathic hamsters (CMHs), Bio TO-2 dilated strain, with advanced congestive heart failure (CHF). Two groups were treated orally with candesartan cilexetil at 22 or 50 mg/kg/d from 190 days of age and compared with a control group (38 animals/group). Investigations were performed at 225, 255, and 285 days of age. Left ventricle (LV) and systemic blood pressures and cardiac output and mesenteric and femoral blood flows were measured in anesthetized animals. LV cavity area, LV and right ventricle (RV) wall thickness and collagen density, and pulmonary and hepatic congestion were assessed. Compared with the control group, candesartan did not modify cardiac hemodynamics but significantly and dose-dependently decreased systemic vascular resistances (on average: −23 and −32% after 22 and 50 mg/kg, respectively) and increased stroke volume (+32 and +42%) and cardiac output (+27 and +34%). Candesartan did not modify mesenteric vascular resistances and blood flow but significantly and dose-dependently decreased femoral vascular resistances (−19 and −33%) and increased femoral blood flow (+33 and +43%). Candesartan significantly decreased LV cavity area (−14 and −8%) and LV (−15 and −31%) and RV (−16 and −24%) collagen density but did not modify LV and RV wall thickness. Candesartan decreased pulmonary congestion at 255 and 285 days of age but did not modify hepatic congestion. In CMHs with advanced CHF, candesartan cilexetil improves systemic and femoral hemodynamics, partly reverses cardiac remodeling, and decreases pulmonary congestion.