Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Induction of protective immunity against transmissible gastroenteritis virus after exposure of neonatal pigs to porcine respiratory coronavirus.

OBJECTIVE To test the ability of porcine respiratory coronavirus (PRCV) to induce protective immunity to antigenically related transmissible gastroenteritis virus (TGEV) in neonatal pigs. DESIGN Neonatal pigs were exposed to PRCV when they were 2, 4, or 6 days old and challenge-exposed to virulent TGEV at 10 days of age. ANIMALS 34 hysterectomy-derived, colostrum-deprived pigs. PROCEDURE After challenge exposure, clinical signs were observed, body weight, antibody response, and virus shedding were measured, and mortality was determined. RESULTS After exposure to PRCV, principals had a slightly slower rate of weight gain than did controls; with 1 exception (a PRCV-exposed pig that was dyspneic for 1 day), principals and controls remained clinically normal until shortly after challenge exposure, when all pigs became listless and anorectic and developed watery diarrhea. However, by day 3, most of the pigs that had been exposed to PRCV when they were either 2 or 4 days old began to recover and most (15/18) survived. Conversely, the clinical condition of most of the other pigs worsened and most (14/16) died. Pigs exposed to PRCV when they were 2 or 4 days old also differed from all other pigs in that they had serum virus-neutralizing antibodies for PRCV and TGEV at the time of challenge exposure. CONCLUSIONS The PRCV can induce protective immunity to TGEV in neonatal pigs and such immunity develops at or about 6 days after exposure to PRCV. Moreover, protective immunity may be coincident with the appearance of virus-neutralizing antibody. CLINICAL RELEVANCE Exposure to PRCV should enhance a TGE herd vaccination program.
Involvement of Caveolin in Probucol-Induced Reduction in hERG Plasma-Membrane Expression

The human ether-à-go-go-related gene (hERG) encodes the pore-forming subunit of the rapidly activating delayed rectifier K+ current (IKr) important for cardiac repolarization. Dysfunction of the hERG channel causes long QT syndrome (LQTS). Although diverse compounds reduce the hERG current (IhERG) by blocking the channel, probucol, a cholesterol-lowering drug that causes LQTS, reduces IhERG by decreasing plasma-membrane hERG protein expression. Here, we investigated the mechanisms of probucol effects on hERG expression levels. Our data demonstrate that probucol accelerated the degradation of mature hERG channels, which associated with caveolin-1 (Cav1) in hERG-expressing HEK cells. In human embryonic kidney (HEK) cells without hERG expression, probucol promoted endogenous Cav1 degradation. In hERG-expressing HEK cells, overexpression of Cav1 enhanced, whereas knockdown of Cav1 impeded, probucol-induced reduction of mature hERG channels. Thus, probucol reduces hERG expression through accelerating Cav1 turnover. The effects of probucol on Cav1 and hERG result from probucol's cholesterol-disrupting action, because low-density lipoprotein (LDL), a potent cholesterol carrier, effectively prevented probucol-induced reduction of IhERG in hERG-expressing HEK cells and of IKr in neonatal rat cardiomyocytes. Our data provide evidence that targeting hERG-interacting protein caveolin represents a novel mechanism for drugs to decrease hERG expression and cause LQTS.
Design and performance comparison of a superregenerative MPSK transceiver

In this paper we present a superregenerative transceiver able to switch among BPSK, QPSK and 8PSK modulations. An HF-band proof-of-concept transceiver is implemented on an FPGA with a minimum of analog circuitry. The desire of making fair comparisons between BER figures rises a problem of clock frequency selection which is finally solved without consuming extra resources.
Regulation of Denitrification Genes in Neisseria meningitidis by Nitric Oxide and the Repressor NsrR

ABSTRACT The human pathogen Neisseria meningitidis is capable of growth using the denitrification of nitrite to nitrous oxide under microaerobic conditions. This process is catalyzed by two reductases: nitrite reductase (encoded by aniA) and nitric oxide (NO) reductase (encoded by norB). Here, we show that in N. meningitidis MC58 norB is regulated by nitric oxide via the product of gene NMB0437 which encodes NsrR. NsrR is a repressor in the absence of NO, but norB expression is derepressed by NO in an NsrR-dependent manner. nsrR-deficient mutants grow by denitrification more rapidly than wild-type N. meningitidis, and this is coincident with the upregulation of both NO reductase and nitrite reductase even under aerobic conditions in the absence of nitrite or NO. The NsrR-dependent repression of aniA (unlike that of norB) is not lifted in the presence of NO. The role of NsrR in the control of expression of aniA is linked to the function of the anaerobic activator protein FNR: analysis of nsrR and fnr single and nsrR fnr double mutants carrying an aniA promoter lacZ fusion indicates that the role of NsrR is to prevent FNR-dependent aniA expression under aerobic conditions, indicating that FNR in N. meningitidis retains considerable activity aerobically.
SPINDLE: SPINtronic Deep Learning Engine for large-scale neuromorphic computing

Deep Learning Networks (DLNs) are bio-inspired large-scale neural networks that are widely used in emerging vision, analytics, and search applications. The high computation and storage requirements of DLNs have led to the exploration of various avenues for their efficient realization. Concurrently, the ability of emerging post-CMOS devices to efficiently mimic neurons and synapses has led to great interest in their use for neuromorphic computing. We describe SPINDLE, a programmable processor for deep learning based on spintronic devices. SPINDLE exploits the unique ability of spintronic devices to realize highly dense and energy-efficient neurons and memory, which form the fundamental building blocks of DLNs. SPINDLE consists of a three-tier hierarchy of processing elements to capture the nested parallelism present in DLNs, and a two-level memory hierarchy to facilitate data reuse. It can be programmed to execute DLNs with widely varying topologies for different applications. SPINDLE employs techniques to limit the overheads of spin-to-charge conversion, and utilizes output and weight quantization to enhance the efficiency of spin-neurons. We evaluate SPINDLE using a device-to-architecture modeling framework and a set of widely used DLN applications (handwriting recognition, face detection, and object recognition). Our results indicate that SPINDLE achieves 14.4X reduction in energy consumption and 20.4X reduction in EDP over the CMOS baseline under iso-area conditions.
Automatic Detection of Phone-Based Anomalies in Dysarthric Speech

Perceptual evaluation is still the most common method in clinical practice for diagnosing and following the progression of the condition of people with speech disorders. Although a number of studies have addressed the acoustic analysis of speech productions exhibiting impairments, additional descriptive analysis is required to manage interperson variability, considering speakers with the same condition or across different conditions. In this context, this article investigates automatic speech processing approaches dedicated to the detection and localization of abnormal acoustic phenomena in speech signal produced by people with speech disorders. This automatic process aims at enhancing the manual investigation of human experts while at the same time reducing the extent of their intervention by calling their attention to specific parts of the speech considered as atypical from an acoustical point of view. Two different approaches are proposed in this article. The first approach models only the normal speech, whereas the second models both normal and dysarthric speech. Both approaches are evaluated following two strategies: one consists of a strict phone comparison between a human annotation of abnormal phones and the automatic output, while the other uses a “one-phone delay” for the comparison. The experimental evaluation of both approaches for the task of detecting acoustic anomalies was conducted on two different corpora composed of French dysarthric speakers and control speakers. These approaches obtain very encouraging results and their potential for clinical uses with different types of dysarthria and neurological diseases is quite promising.
Tandem insults of prenatal ischemia plus postnatal raised intrathoracic pressure in a novel rat model of encephalopathy of prematurity.

OBJECT Encephalopathy of prematurity (EP) is common in preterm, low birth weight infants who require postnatal mechanical ventilation. The worst types of EP are the hemorrhagic forms, including choroid plexus, germinal matrix, periventricular, and intraventricular hemorrhages. Survivors exhibit life-long cognitive, behavioral, and motor abnormalities. Available preclinical models do not fully recapitulate the salient features of hemorrhagic EP encountered in humans. In this study, the authors evaluated a novel model using rats that featured tandem insults of transient prenatal intrauterine ischemia (IUI) plus transient postnatal raised intrathoracic pressure (RIP). METHODS Timed-pregnant Wistar rats were anesthetized and underwent laparotomy on embryonic Day 19. Intrauterine ischemia was induced by clamping the uterine and ovarian vasculature for 20 minutes. Natural birth occurred on embryonic Day 22. Six hours after birth, the pups were subjected to an episode of RIP, induced by injecting glycerol (50%, 13 μl/g intraperitoneally). Control groups included naive, sham surgery, and IUI alone. Pathological, histological, and behavioral analyses were performed on pups up to postnatal Day 52. RESULTS Compared with controls, pups subjected to IUI+RIP exhibited significant increases in postnatal mortality and hemorrhages in the choroid plexus, germinal matrix, and periventricular tissues as well as intraventricularly. On postnatal Days 35-52, they exhibited significant abnormalities involving complex vestibulomotor function and rapid spatial learning. On postnatal Day 52, the brain and body mass were significantly reduced. CONCLUSIONS Tandem insults of IUI plus postnatal RIP recapitulate many features of the hemorrhagic forms of EP found in humans, suggesting that these insults in combination may play important roles in pathogenesis.
Baboon syndrome resulting from systemic drugs: is there strife between SDRIFE and allergic contact dermatitis syndrome?

The term ‘baboon syndrome’ (BS) was introduced 20 years ago to classify patients in whom a specific skin eruption resembling the red gluteal area of baboons occurred after systemic exposure to contact allergens. Thereafter, similar eruptions have been reported after systemic exposure to beta‐lactam antibiotics and other drugs. In addition to the presentation of 2 of our own cases, we have reviewed and characterized the main clinical and histological aspects of published reports of drug‐related baboon syndrome (DRBS) and compared the primary clinical signs from such cases to those found in other distinct drug eruptions. Of approximately 100 published baboon syndrome cases, 50 were identified as drug‐induced. Of these, 8 were representatives of systemically induced contact dermatitis (SCD), and 42 were examples of drug eruptions elicited by systemic administration of either oral or intravenous drugs. The main clinical findings included a sharply defined symmetrical erythema of the gluteal area and in the flexural or intertriginous folds without any systemic symptoms and signs. 14 of 42 cases were elicited by amoxicillin, 30 of the 42 patients were male, and latency periods were between a few hours and a few days after exposure. DRBS is a rare, prognostically benign and often underdiagnosed drug eruption with distinct clinical features. The term baboon syndrome, however, does not reflect the complete range of symptoms and signs and is ethically and culturally problematic. Moreover, baboon syndrome is historically often equated with a mercury‐induced exanthem in patients with previous contact sensitization. Symmetrical drug‐related intertriginous and flexural exanthema, or SDRIFE, specifically refers to the distinctive clinical pattern of this drug eruption, and the following diagnostic criteria are proposed: 1) exposure to a systemically administered drug either at the first or repeated dose (excluding contact allergens); 2) sharply demarcated erythema of the gluteal/perianal area and/or V‐shaped erythema of the inguinal/perigenital area; 3) involvement of at least one other intertriginous/flexural localization; 4) symmetry of affected areas; and 5) absence of systemic symptoms and signs.
Encoding Dynamic Invariance for Video Understanding

Background: In recent years, advances in machine learning have revolutionized the field of static image understanding. The use of specialized convolutional architectures allow deep neural networks to learn image features at multiple scales for tasks such as object detection, segmentation and pose estimation. Despite these successes in 2D, extending such capabilities to video understanding has proved a challenging task. In order to best perform human activity recognition, for instance, we must capture dynamic information across multiple frames, thereby motivating questions such as: What is an activity and how should we represent it? Do activities have well-defined spatial and temporal extent? [1], and so on. Inspired by the use of such tools as Kalman filters in the engineering world, I add a new question to this list: if we have a model for some known dynamics in a video recognition task, is there a way to encourage the network to capture these dynamics in the learning process? Here, this problem is referred to as that of encoding dynamic invariance in the network, in correspondence with the goal of fixing the known dynamical model via structures within the network itself. As a motivating example: consider the task of tracking individuals in video. For instance, a biologist might be interested in monitoring the behavior of individual animals in a flock or herd, or a traffic engineer might be interested in the typical flow of pedestrians at a subway terminal (see Fig. 1). In practice, this task becomes difficult due to challenges such as occlusion, changes in clothing and lighting, severe deformation, rare or novel poses, and in the case of certain species of animal, the lack of strongly distinguishing visual features. Consider now that the researcher has a well-developed model of the gait dynamics of the video subjects, and wishes to encapsulate this model within a deep neural network in a way that allows the network to distinguish between individuals as a function of their gait patterns. Such a scenario is not unreasonable: already, researchers are able to use gait stability analysis to monitor changes in gait with age and injury, and measure differences in male/female gait [2].
Adoption Promote C ommercialization ? Evidence from Chickpea Technologies in Ethiopia

This paper evaluates the adoption determinants and casual impact of adoption of improved chickpea technologies on market integration in rural Ethiopia. The article makes use of data obtained from a random cross-section sample of 700 small-scale farmers in Ethiopia. We apply augmented double hurdle model to analyze the determinants of the intensity of variety adoption conditional on overcoming seed access constraints. We estimate the causal impact of technology adoption on market integration by utilizing treatment effect model, regression based on propensity score as well as matching techniques to assess results robustness. Results show that knowledge of existing varieties, perception about the attributes of improved varieties, household wealth (livestock and land) and availability of active family labor force play a significant role in enhancing the level of adoption of improved chickpea varieties. Our analysis also reveals that the adoption of improved agricultural technologies has a significant positive impact on marketed surplus and the findings are consistence across the three models suggesting the robustness of the results. Integration into output market is also positively associated with household wealth and availability of active family labor force and negatively associated with age of household head and distance to main market. Results confirm the potential direct role of technology adoption on market integration among the rural households, as higher productivity from improved technology translates into higher output market integration. JEL classification: C13, C15, C34, C52, O32, O38
On the fading channel performance of temporal-spatial filters for CDMA

A CDMA system performance can be enhanced by interference management techniques. We consider the uplink of a CDMA system that employs two such techniques: temporal multiuser detection and spatial antenna array beam forming. Temporal-spatial MMSE type receivers with several different criteria have been previously proposed for a static channel. We consider such MMSE filters assuming a multiple time-scale fading channel model. It is shown that under the given channel conditions and system assumptions, three MMSE type receivers; the unconstrained optimum MMSE detector, the constrained optimum MMSE detector and the cascaded temporal-spatial MMSE detector are identical and the resulting combined receiver employs an MMSE multiuser detector at the output of each array element (temporal MMSE filter) followed by an MRC (spatial matched filter).
A note on the stable equivalence problem

We provide counterexamples to the stable equivalence problem in every dimension $dgeq2$. That means that we construct hypersurfaces $H_1, H_2subsetC^{d+1}$ whose cylinders $H_1timesC$ and $H_2timesC$ are equivalent hypersurfaces in $C^{d+2}$, although $H_1$ and $H_2$ themselves are not equivalent by an automorphism of $C^{d+1}$. We also give, for every $dgeq2$, examples of two non-isomorphic algebraic varieties of dimension $d$ which are biholomorphic.
Enhancement and Resetting of Locomotor Activity by Muscle Afferentsa

Abstract: The generation of the normal motor pattern for walking in mammals requires feedback from muscle proprioceptors. Two characteristics of the motor pattern particularly dependent on proprioceptive signals are (1) the magnitude of activity in knee and ankle extensor muscles and (2) the duration of extensor bursts during stance. Sensory regulation of these characteristics ensures that the level of activity in extensor muscles during stance is appropriate for the load carried by the leg and that the swing phase is not initiated when a leg is loaded. Many different groups of afferents from flexor and extensor muscles can influence the locomotor pattern. Most attention has focused on the action of group I afferents from ankle extensors. Electrical stimulation of these afferents during extension increases the duration and the magnitude of extensor activity. The prolongation of extensor activity depends in part on excitation of the extensor half‐center by group Ib afferents from Golgi tendon organs. The enhancement of the magnitude of extensor bursts is produced primarily via disynaptic and polysynaptic pathways opened only during locomotion. The involvement of the proprioceptive signals in the generation of locomotor activity means that the gains in reflex pathways must be constantly calibrated according to the biomechanical properties of the locomotor system. Alteration of these properties by weakening ankle extensor muscles has recently been found to produce compensatory changes in proprioceptive influences on the locomotor pattern.
Low profile fractured-reflect-disk to generate OAM vortex beam in X-band

This work proposes and realises using EM simulation a low profile Fractured Reflect Disk to produce efficient Orbital Angular Momentum (OAM) vortex beam in X-Band. It examines a unit cell with appropriate reflection efficiency and phase response. Then assembly of unit cells as per their phase response generates vortex beam. In the simulation of the Fractured-Reflect-Disk, a microstrip antenna acts as the feeding element. Simulated results indicate the possible realisation of highly efficient OAM vortex beam which may find effective application in wireless communication.
Update of PROFEAT: a web server for computing structural and physicochemical features of proteins and peptides from amino acid sequence

Sequence-derived structural and physicochemical features have been extensively used for analyzing and predicting structural, functional, expression and interaction profiles of proteins and peptides. PROFEAT has been developed as a web server for computing commonly used features of proteins and peptides from amino acid sequence. To facilitate more extensive studies of protein and peptides, numerous improvements and updates have been made to PROFEAT. We added new functions for computing descriptors of protein–protein and protein–small molecule interactions, segment descriptors for local properties of protein sequences, topological descriptors for peptide sequences and small molecule structures. We also added new feature groups for proteins and peptides (pseudo-amino acid composition, amphiphilic pseudo-amino acid composition, total amino acid properties and atomic-level topological descriptors) as well as for small molecules (atomic-level topological descriptors). Overall, PROFEAT computes 11 feature groups of descriptors for proteins and peptides, and a feature group of more than 400 descriptors for small molecules plus the derived features for protein–protein and protein–small molecule interactions. Our computational algorithms have been extensively tested and used in a number of published works for predicting proteins of specific structural or functional classes, protein–protein interactions, peptides of specific functions and quantitative structure activity relationships of small molecules. PROFEAT is accessible free of charge at http://bidd.cz3. nus.edu. sg/cgi-bin/prof/protein/profnew.cgi.
A Distribution-Based Systems Reliability Model Under Extreme Shocks and Natural Degradation

Degradation, and shock are two common mechanisms accounting for product failures. This paper presents a convenient means of capturing both shock and degradation in a single model when the extent of degradation and the magnitude of shocks are not observable, but only the failure times and the corresponding failure modes are recorded. We assume that the lifetime of a degradation-oriented failure, which is regarded as some initial random resource, belongs to some distribution family. Shocks arrive according to a non-homogeneous Poisson process, and the destructive probability depends on the transformed remaining resource of the system. Under these assumptions, we propose the single failure time model, and the recurrent event model. This study complements the well-known Brown-Proschan model. The single failure time model has successfully been applied to a real time data set. We also conduct a simulation study to examine the accuracy of our model.