Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Fallen Angels or Risen Apes? A Tale of the Intricate Complexities of Imbalanced Immune Responses in the Pathogenesis and Progression of Immune-Mediated and Viral Cancers

Excessive immune responses directed against foreign pathogens, self-antigens, or commensal microflora can cause cancer establishment and progression if the execution of tight immuno-regulatory mechanisms fails. On the other hand, induction of potent tumor antigen-specific immune responses together with stimulation of the innate immune system is a pre-requisite for effective anti-tumor immunity, and if suppressed by the strong immuno-regulatory mechanisms can lead to cancer progression. Therefore, it is crucial that the inevitable co-existence of these fundamental, yet conflicting roles of immune-regulatory cells is carefully streamlined as imbalances can be detrimental to the host. Infection with chronic persistent viruses is characterized by severe immune dysfunction resulting in T cell exhaustion and sometimes deletion of antigen-specific T cells. More often, this is due to increased immuno-regulatory processes, which are triggered to down-regulate immune responses and limit immunopathology. However, such heightened levels of immune disruption cause a concomitant loss of tumor immune-surveillance and create a permissive microenvironment for cancer establishment and progression, as demonstrated by increased incidences of cancer in immunosuppressed hosts. Paradoxically, while some cancers arise as a consequence of increased immuno-regulatory mechanisms that inhibit protective immune responses and impinge on tumor surveillance, other cancers arise due to impaired immuno-regulatory mechanisms and failure to limit pathogenic inflammatory responses. This intricate complexity, where immuno-regulatory cells can be beneficial in certain immune settings but detrimental in other settings underscores the need for carefully formulated interventions to equilibrate the balance between immuno-stimulatory and immuno-regulatory processes.
Linearity performance of Gate Metal Engineered (GME) Omega Gate-Silicon Nanowire MOSFET: A TCAD study

In this work, detailed investigation of linear behavior of Gate Metal Engineered (GME) Omega Gate Silicon Nanowire (SiNW) MOSFET has been studied and results so obtained are simultaneously compared with Omega gate SiNW MOSFET using TCAD quantum study. In the comparison of GME-Omega Gate-SiNW MOSFET and Omega-Gate SiNW MOSFET, the former shows superior linearity performance in terms of higher order harmonics such as VIP2, VIP3 and IIP3 with lower intermodulation distortion. This has been substantiated through various analytical expressions which correlate linearity with the device parameters. Thus, signifies that Omega-Gate SiNW MOSFET is a potential candidate for linear RF applications.
Feature-based recommendation framework on OLAP

The queries in Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) are user-guided. OLAP is based on a multidimensional data model for complex analytical and ad-hoc queries with a rapid execution time. Those queries are either routed or on-demand revolved around the OLAP task. Most such queries are reusable and optimized in the system. Therefore, the queries recorded in the query logs for completing various OLAP tasks may be reusable. The query logs usually contain a sequence of SQL queries that show the action flows of users for their preference, their interests, and their behaviours during the action. This research investigates the feature extraction to identify query patterns and user behaviours from historical query logs. The expected results will be used to recommend forthcoming queries to help decision makers with data analysis. The purpose of this work is to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of OLAP in terms of computation cost and response time. Furthermore, the proposed OLAP system will be able to adjust some parameters for finding common behaviours from different users that make the recommendation system flexible and user-adaptive.
Role of Postnatal Acquisition of the Intestinal Microbiome in the Early Development of Immune Function

Objectives: Therapy with broad-spectrum antibiotics is a common practice for premature infants. This treatment can reduce the biodiversity of the fecal microbiota and may be a factor in the cause of necrotizing enterocolitis. In contrast, probiotic treatment of premature infants reduces the incidence of necrotizing enterocolitis. We hypothesized that 1 mechanism for these observations is the influence of bacteria on postnatal development of the mucosal immune system. Materials and Methods: Expression of immune molecules and microbial sensors was investigated in the postnatal mouse gastrointestinal tract by real-time polymerase chain reaction. Subsequently, 2-week-old specific pathogen-free and microbial-reduced (MR; antibiotic treated) mice were compared for immune molecule and microbial sensor expression, mesenteric lymph node T-cell numbers and activation, intestinal barrier function/permeability, systemic lymphocyte numbers, and T-cell phenotype commitment. Results: Toll-like receptor 2, 4, and 5 expression was highest in 2-week-old specific pathogen-free mice, and this expression was decreased in MR mice. There was no difference in intestinal tight-junctional function, as evaluated by fluorescein isothiocyanate-dextran uptake, but MR mice had increased bacterial translocation across the intestinal epithelial barrier. MR mice had significantly fewer splenic B cells and mesenteric lymph node CD4+ T cells, but there were normal numbers of splenic T cells. These systemic T cells from MR mice produced more interleukin-4 and less interferon-γ and IL-17, indicative of maintenance of the fetal, T-helper cell type 2 phenotype. Conclusions: The present study shows that intestinal commensal microbiota have an influence on early postnatal immune development. Determining specific bacteria and/or bacterial ligands critical for this development could provide insight into the mechanisms by which broad-spectrum antibiotics and/or probiotic therapy influence the development of the mucosal immune system and mucosal-related diseases.
Responsiveness of hepatic and cerebral cytochrome P450 in rat offspring prenatally and lactationally exposed to a reconstituted PCB mixture

Perinatal polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) exposures still remain a serious health concern because offspring receive PCB burden from mother during vulnerable processes of development. Since cytochrome P450 (CYP) represents a toxicological endpoint, in the present study, representing an extended investigation of a previous multitasked one, we explored the long‐term responsiveness of CYP1A and CYP2B isoforms by Western blot analysis in liver and whole brain of lactating (PN12), weaning (PN21), and adult offspring (PN60) rats prenatally and lactationally exposed to a reconstituted PCB mixture (RM) of noncoplanar PCB138, 153, 180, and coplanar PCB126 congeners. We chose highly chlorinated PCBs instead of lower chlorinated one, because their recalcitrance to biotransformation makes easy their accumulation/persistence in tissues and breast milk. Dioxin‐like congener PCB126 binding aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AHR) is responsible of many toxic effects. Pregnant Sprague–Dawley dams with high affinity AHR received subcutaneous injection of RM (10 mg/kg body weight) daily during gestation (days 15–19) and twice a week during breast‐feeding. The results evidenced a transfer of PCBs to neonates through milk and a significant responsiveness of hepatic CYP in both mothers and offspring. In liver of exposed progeny, CYP isoforms exhibited a significant increment at PN12 (70% over control) and at PN21 (270% over control). Contrary to dams, in adult PCB offspring CYP levels showed a decline up to values similar to those of control. This transient developmental responsiveness of CYP isoforms in offspring liver reflects roughly the time course of hepatic PCB levels previously reported. Even if congeners were detected in brain, we failed in evidencing a responsiveness of CYP isoforms probably because of region‐specific CYP expression in this organ. In conclusion, induction of offspring hepatic CYP is index of liver PCB burden, and despite the insensitivity of whole brain CYP we cannot exclude brain vulnerability toward PCB. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Environ Toxicol 29: 856–866, 2014.
Transformations of an Auditory Temporal Code in the Medulla of a Sound-Producing Fish

The fish auditory system provides important insights into the evolution and mechanisms of vertebrate hearing. Fish have relatively simple auditory systems, without a cochlea for mechanical frequency analysis. However, as in all vertebrates, the primary auditory afferents of fish represent sounds as stimulus-entrained spike trains. Thus, fish provide important models for studying how temporal spiking patterns are used in higher level neural computations. In this paper we demonstrate that one of the fundamental transformations of information in the auditory system of a sound-producing fish,Pollimyrus, takes place in the auditory medulla. We discovered a class of neurons in which evoked spiking patterns were relatively independent of the stimulus fine structure and appeared to reflect intrinsic properties of the neurons. These neurons generated sustained responses but were poorly phase-locked to tones compared with the primary afferents. The interval histograms showed that spike timing was regular. However, in contrast to primary afferents, the mode of the interspike interval distribution was independent of the period of tonal stimuli. The tuning of the neurons was broad, with best sensitivity in the same spectral region where these animals concentrate energy in their communication sounds. The physiology of these neurons was similar to that of the chopper neurons known in the auditory brainstem of mammals. Our findings suggest that this medullary transformation, from phase-locked afferent input to chopper-like physiology, is basic to vertebrate auditory processing, even within lineages that have not evolved a cochlea.
Sphingosine‐1‐phosphate antibodies as potential agents in the treatment of cancer and age‐related macular degeneration

Sphingosine‐1‐phosphate (S1P) is a pleiotropic bioactive lipid thought to be dysregulated in a variety of disease conditions. In this review, we discuss the roles of S1P in cancer and in wet age‐related macular degeneration. We also explore potential treatment strategies for these disorders, including the utility of anti‐S1P antibodies acting as molecular sponges to neutralize dysregulated S1P in relevant tissues.
Responsive Systems Comparison Method: Case Study in Assessing Future Designs in the Presence of Change

In this short paper, the Responsive Systems Comparison (RSC) method is introduced. RSC is a structured method for collecting information and conducting analysis to characterize a wide variety of possible futures in order to enable the comparison of the performance of proposed systems in those futures. A case study uses the RSC to analyze a satellite radar system. The needs and expectations of a user community for such a system, the context it will operate in, and its technical basis are determined both at the present time, and with possible changes over the next 15 years. This information is used to set up an analysis that should be able to highlight systems that will deliver value under a wide variety of future situations. The case study illustrates the practicality of the method, and provides lessons for improvement and implementation.
MicroRNAs MiR-218, MiR-125b, and Let-7g Predict Prognosis in Patients with Oral Cavity Squamous Cell Carcinoma

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) have a major impact on regulatory networks in human carcinogenesis. In this study, we sought to investigate the prognostic significance of miRNAs in patients with oral cavity squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC). In a discovery phase, RNA was extracted from 58 OSCC tumor samples and paired normal tissues. MiRNAs expression was evaluated with TaqMan Array Card and TaqMan MicroRNA assays. The prognostic significance of the miRNA signature identified in the discovery phase was validated by qRT-PCR in a replication set consisting of 141 formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded (FFPE) samples. We identified a miRNA regulatory network centered on the three hub genes (SP1, MYC, and TP53) that predicted distinct clinical endpoints. Three miRNAs (miR-218, miR-125b, and let-7g) and their downstream response genes had a concordant prognostic significance on disease-free survival and disease-specific survival rates. In addition, patients with a reduced expression of miR-218, miR-125b, and let-7g have a higher risk of poor outcomes in presence of specific risk factors (p-stage III-IV, pT3-4, or pN+). Our findings indicate that specific miRNAs have prognostic significance in OSCC patients and may improve prognostic stratification over traditional risk factors.
Working Paper Series Payment Intermediation and the Origins of Banking

The medieval banks of continental Europe facilitated trade by serving as payment intermediaries. Depositors commonly would pay one another by transferring bank balances with the aid of overdraft credit. We model this process in an environment of intermediate good exchange with incomplete contract enforcement. Our model suggests that the early banks were capable of accessing the “netting credit” that exists by virtue of there being a high proportion of offsetting transactions in an economy. Individual traders are unable to net their individual positions because of difficulty in enforcing contracts for future performance with the other traders. Banks, by standing between buyer and seller on a centralized basis, can internalize the offsetting nature of the whole set of trades. This original role of banks is still a vital one. JEL classification: E58, G21, G28
Object views: language support for intelligent object caching in parallel and distributed computations

Object-based parallel and distributed applications are becoming increasingly popular, driven by the programmability advantages of component technology and a flat shared-object space. However, the flat shared-object space introduces a performance challenge: applications that rely on the transparent coherent caching of objects achieve high performance only on tightly coupled parallel machines. In distributed environments, the overheads of object caching force application designers to choose other solutions. Consequently, most applications sacrifice programmability, relying instead on either the explicit coherence management of cached objects, or on vastly different middleware abstractions such as multicast and events. In this paper, we describe object views — language support for efficient object caching in parallel and distributed computations. Object views specify restrictions on how computation threads can use an object, providing the underlying implementation with information about the potential side effects of object access, and thereby enabling construction of scalable, low-overhead caching protocols customized to application requirements. We present extensions to the Java programming language for expressing object views, and describe the design and implementation of a translator and run-time system for executing view-augmented Java programs on a distributed cluster of workstations. Experimental results based on a shared whiteboard application demonstrate that view-based object caching can achieve performance superior to multicast- and event-based implementations, while retaining essentially a shared object interface.
A Corynebacterium glutamicum rnhA recG Double Mutant Showing Lysozyme- sensitivity, Temperature-sensitive Growth, and UV-Sensitivity

Corynebacterium glutamicum mutant KY9707 was originally isolated for lysozyme-sensitivity, and showed temperature-sensitive growth. Two DNA fragments from a wild-type C. glutamicum chromosomal library suppressed the temperature-sensitivity of KY9707. These clones also rescued the lysozyme-sensitivity of KY9707, although partially. One of them encodes a protein of 382 amino acid residues, the N-terminal domain of which was homologous to RNase HI. This gene suppressed the temperature-sensitive growth of an Escherichia coli rnhA rnhB double mutant. We concluded that this gene encodes a functional RNase HI of C. glutamicum and designated it as rnhA. The other gene encodes a protein of 707 amino acid residues highly homologous to RecG protein. The C. glutamicum recG gene complemented the UV-sensitivity of E. coli recG258::kan mutant. KY9707 showed increased UV-sensitivity, which was partially rescued by either the recG or rnhA gene of C. gluamicum. Point mutations were found in both recG and rnhA genes in KY9707. These suggest that temperature-sensitive growth, UV-sensitivity, and probably lysozyme-sensitivity also, of KY9707 were caused by mutations in the genes encoding RNase HI and RecG.
Preliminary Approaches to Experimental and Numerical Study on Fast Crack Propagation and Crack Arrest

Within the limit of relatively short arrested crack, static approximation by applying linear fracture mechanics has yielded useful results for theoretical interpretation and practical application of currently used brittlefracture propagation arrest test (the concept of arrest toughness). But later experimental investigations using very wide specimens (1300 to 2500-mm-wide plates) have revealed that this simple interpretation fails to have a consistency with the case of a long arrested crack. For the inadequacy of static approximation based on arrest toughness concept, the concept of an effective stress intensity factor has been introduced from a practical point of view without a clear quantitative explanation for it. In search of a more relevant theory for fast crack propagation and to see how the neglect of dynamic aspects affects the interpretation of unstable crack propagation arrest test and philosophy of crack arrest design, a dynamic fracture mechanics analysis was made with the use of the finite-difference method to solve the equation of motion for the two-dimensional elastic problem. Results of a numerical experiment are presented, and experimental results for polymethylmethacrylate specimen and structural steels are discussed in terms of dynamic fracture mechanics analysis with a focus on energetic aspect of the crack propagation processes.
A cooperative location service for VANETs

Routing messages over vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) is usually achieved through geographic routing protocols. In such networks, the vehicle dynamics causes rapid changes on the vehicle density and the communication links. In order to be efficient to route messages from a vehicle to another, we need to locate each node (its position), this is achieved by a location service. This study works on simple location service adapted for unicast routing over VANETs in city environment. This service is able to find a route from a route from a source to the destination and this route is the one passing through the most dense path‥ We have implemented our proposal on the OMNET++ simulator and we have conducted extensive simulations in different scenarios to evaluate its scalability and robustness against frequent topology changes. The results obtained have shown that our proposed protocol provides significant improvements in terms of packet delivery ratio, end-to-end delay and overhead compared to EGyTAR protocol.
Performance comparison between switching-flux and IPM machine with rare earth and ferrite PMs

Switching Flux Permanent Magnet machines compared with Interior Permanent Magnet machines are presented to be interesting solutions in terms of torque per volume density, compactness, active material layout and cooling capability. The flux linkage results to be bi-directional and voltage is almost sinusoidal. These machines are then interesting for AC drives and field weakening operation. Employing low cost magnet material must be carefully evaluated despite of the lack of torque capability adopting rare earths permanent magnet can be recovered with cost saving.
Hand Palm Vein Authentication by Using Junction Points with Correlation Method

Hand palm vein authentication is a biometric modality, which can be used to identify a person. In this paper, palm vein authentication by using Junction point with correlation method is proposed. The process of training and testing the palm vein will take less time to produce the output Our proposed method effectively reduce the processing time and increase the accuracy rate. Keywords— Biometric, Junction point, Hand palm vein, Correlat ion method.
A Comparative Analysis of Optimum and Suboptimum Rake Receivers in Impulsive UWB Environment

In this paper, the performance of rake receivers in the presence of fading and impulsive noise is addressed. The optimum maximum likelihood (ML) rake receiver for impulsive fading channel is derived, and a suboptimum rake receiver with a reduced complexity is obtained for practical purposes. Numerical results show that the suboptimum rake receiver exhibits almost the same performance as the optimum rake receiver. It is also observed that, as the number of fingers of a rake receiver increases, the performance of the rake receiver designed for impulsive environment improves, while the rake receiver optimized for Gaussian environment experiences performance degradation in an impulsive environment
Predicting stereoscopic viewing comfort using a coherence-based computational model

We introduce a novel computational model for objectively assessing the visual comfort of stereoscopic 3D imagery. Our model integrates research in visual perception with tools from stereo computer vision to quantify the degree of stereo coherence between both stereo half-images. We show that the coherence scores computed by our model strongly correlate with human comfort ratings using a perceptual study of 20 participants rating 80 images each. Based on our experiments, we further propose a taxonomy of stereo coherence issues which affect viewing comfort, and propose a set of computational tools that extend our model to identify and localise stereo coherence issues from stereoscopic 3D images.
Mutational Analysis of cis-Acting RNA Signals in Segment 7 of Influenza A Virus

ABSTRACT The genomic viral RNA (vRNA) segments of influenza A virus contain specific packaging signals at their termini that overlap the coding regions. To further characterize cis-acting signals in segment 7, we introduced synonymous mutations into the terminal coding regions. Mutation of codons that are normally highly conserved reduced virus growth in embryonated eggs and MDCK cells between 10- and 1,000-fold compared to that of the wild-type virus, whereas similar alterations to nonconserved codons had little effect. In all cases, the growth-impaired viruses showed defects in virion assembly and genome packaging. In eggs, nearly normal numbers of virus particles that in aggregate contained apparently equimolar quantities of the eight segments were formed, but with about fourfold less overall vRNA content than wild-type virions, suggesting that, on average, fewer than eight segments per particle were packaged. Concomitantly, the particle/PFU and segment/PFU ratios of the mutant viruses showed relative increases of up to 300-fold, with the behavior of the most defective viruses approaching that predicted for random segment packaging. Fluorescent staining of infected cells for the nucleoprotein and specific vRNAs confirmed that most mutant virus particles did not contain a full genome complement. The specific infectivity of the mutant viruses produced by MDCK cells was also reduced, but in this system, the mutations also dramatically reduced virion production. Overall, we conclude that segment 7 plays a key role in the influenza A virus genome packaging process, since mutation of as few as 4 nucleotides can dramatically inhibit infectious virus production through disruption of vRNA packaging.