Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Combined Allogeneic Tumor Cell Vaccination and Systemic Interleukin 12 Prevents Mammary Carcinogenesis in HER-2/neu Transgenic Mice

Transgenic Balb/c mice expressing the transforming rat HER-2/neu oncogene develop early and multifocal mammary carcinomas. Within the first 5 months of life the tissue-specific expression of HER-2/neu causes a progression in all their 10 mammary glands from atypical hyperplasia to invasive carcinoma. It was previously observed that chronic administration of interleukin (IL)-12 increased tumor latency, but every mouse eventually succumbed to multiple carcinomas. A significant improvement in tumor prevention was sought by administering allogeneic mammary carcinoma cells expressing HER-2/neu combined with systemic IL-12. This treatment reduced tumor incidence by 90% and more than doubled mouse lifetime. For the maximum prevention p185neu antigen must be expressed by allogeneic cells. IL-12 treatment strongly increased the cell vaccine efficacy. The mammary glands of mice receiving the combined treatment displayed a markedly reduced epithelial cell proliferation, angiogenesis, and HER-2/neu expression, while the few hyperplastic foci were heavily infiltrated by granulocytes, macrophages, and CD8+ lymphocytes. Specific anti–HER-2/neu antibodies were produced and a nonpolarized activation of CD4+ and CD8+ cells secreting IL-4 and interferon (IFN)-γ were evident. A central role for IFN-γ in the preventive effect was proven by the lack of efficacy of vaccination in IFN-γ gene knockout HER-2/neu transgenic Balb/c mice. A possible requirement for IFN-γ is related to its effect on antibody production, in particular on IgG2a and IgG2b subclasses, that were not induced in IFN-γ knockout HER-2/neu mice. In conclusion, our data show that an allogeneic HER-2/neu–expressing cell vaccine combined with IL-12 systemic treatment can prevent the onset of genetically determined tumors.
Improving the Performance of Saturated Cores Fault Current Limiters by Varying Winding Density in the AC Coils

Effect of the winding density in the AC coils on the performance of a saturated cores fault current limiter (SCFCL) has been studied, exploiting Finite Element Analysis. For a given design, a fixed number of turns was concentrated at the center of the AC coils limb, resulting in high windings density. The coil length was then increased gradually along the limb, decreasing the winding density and therefore decreasing the coil impedance. However, we found that the ratio between the fault to nominal state impedances increases with decreasing winding density. The results are discussed and explained as originating from the change in the flux linkage of windings in the coil for various core states. In the nominal-state of the SCFCL, the core is saturated and the coupling between the windings is lower, given the lower winding density. However, when the core is desaturated during a fault, the magnetic interaction of the windings with the core strengthens, the coupling between the windings increases and contributes to higher fault-state impedance. Thus, reducing the winding density may serve in increasing the impedance ratio of the device and improving the performance of SCFCLs. The results suggest that the windings density in SCFCLs should be used as a significant design parameter.
Gingivomorphometry - esthetic evaluation of the crown-mucogingival complex: a new method for collection and measurement of standardized and reproducible data in oral photography.

OBJECTIVES A new method is introduced for the esthetic evaluation of the periimplant mucogingival complex through collection of standardized oral photographs and computer-assisted measurement of reproducible data. Using this method, different soft tissue and crown parameters in the dentogingival complex can be measured and the esthetic outcome monitored. MATERIAL AND METHODS A photographic device for standardized oral photography and a standard protocol for the esthetic evaluation of the crown-mucogingival complex is presented, comprising six soft tissue parameters: (1) mesial and (2) distal papilla areas, (3) mesial and (4) distal papilla heights, (5) soft tissue-crown perimeter, and (6) gingival recession. In order to demonstrate the reproducibility of standardized oral photographs and the accuracy of the measurement of the six parameters, the data obtained in each of two such standardized clinical photographs, taken at 10-14 days intervals, of the anterior maxillary region from 10 patients with no apparent dental disease were compared. For the statistical analysis of the reproducibility of these dependent data the 95% confidence interval and the coefficients of variation were calculated from measurement means and ranges of each of the above parameters, pooled from all 10 patients. RESULTS Statistical analysis revealed high reproducibility with no significant differences between the range of mean values of all six parameter measurements on the first and second standardized oral photograph of the same patient, respectively. CONCLUSION Gingivomorphometry on standardized oral photographs can be considered to be an accurate and reproducible method for the evaluation and measurement of different dentogingival and periimplant parameters.
HEADLIGHT GLARE SIMULATOR FOR A DRIVING SIMULATOR 2.0

In this paper, the authors would like to introduce a second generation of headlight glare simulator to be used with a driving simulator that significantly improves spatial and brightness accuracy of previously developed prototype headlight glare simulator (Fullerton & Peli, 2009). The system combined a programmable off–the-shelf light emitting diodes (LED) display board and a beamsplitter so that the LED lights, representing headlights of oncoming cars, are superimposed over the driving simulator screen. Although the early prototype headlight glare simulator proved the feasibility of the concept, it required precise spatial arrangement of optical components to avoid misalignments of the superimposed images. Due to the spatial limitations of the driving simulator, this ideal set up is hard to achieve in practice and the use of a 2-dimensional beamsplitter plate inevitably introduces parallax. Furthermore, the driver’s viewing position varies by driver based on the driver’s height and seating position preferences, and this exacerbates the misalignment. In order to minimize the resulting parallax errors, the new glare simulator the authors report on here has an intuitive calibration procedure (simple drag-and-drop alignment of nine calibration dots on the screen) which defines a set of mapping coefficients for each driver and reduces overall parallax error. In addition to the improvements of spatial synchronization, in order to simulate the dynamics of headlight brightness changes during nighttime driving, a new LED intensity control algorithms based on headlight and LED beam shapes were developed and validated.
An L 1 --Error Bound for a Semi-Implicit Difference Scheme Applied to a Stiff System of Conservation Laws

A straightforward semi-implicit finite-difference method approximating a system of conservation laws including a stiff relaxation term is analyzed. We show that the error, measured in $\Lone$, is bounded by $O(\sqrt{\dt})$ independent of the stiffness, where the time step $\dt$ represents the mesh size. As a simple corollary we obtain that solutions of the stiff system converge toward the solution of an equilibrium model at a rate of $O(\delta^{1/3})$ in $\Lone$ as the relaxation time $\delta$ tends to zero.
Metadata for integrating speech documents in a text retrieval system

We present an information retrieval system that simultaneously allows to search for text and speech documents. The retrieval system accepts vague queries and performs a best-match search to find those documents that are relevant to the query. The output of the retrieval system is a list of ranked documents where the documents on the top of the list satisfy best the user's information need. The relevance of the documents is estimated by means of metadata (document description vectors). The metadata is automatically generated and it is organized such that queries can be processed efficiently. We introduce a controlled indexing vocabulary for both speech and text documents. The size of the new indexing vocabulary is small (1000 features) compared with the sizes of indexing vocabularies of conventional text retrieval (10000 - 100000 features). We show that the retrieval effectiveness based on such a small indexing vocabulary is similar to the retrieval effectiveness of a Boolean retrieval system.
Complex Systems - A New Paradigm for the Integrative Study of Management, Physical, and Technological Systems

In this introductory note, we describe the motivation for this special issue on complex systems. We begin by noting the potential management opportunities offered by recent advances in complexity science. After defining the nature of complex systems and the many ways they are expressed in organizations and markets, we briefly describe the main tools and concepts of complexity theory. We close with a brief review of the articles in this issue and their relevance to the interests and concerns of managers.
Temperament Dispositions, Problematic Eating Behaviours and Overweight in Adolescents.

Obesity, a common health condition in adolescence leading to severe medical complications, is assumed to be influenced by temperament factors. This paper investigates associations between reactive and regulative temperament, problematic eating behaviours and excess weight. Several self-report instruments were completed by 130 adolescents (mean age 14.13 ± 0.61 years), including 27 overweight and obese individuals (20.8%). Bootstrap analysis revealed a mediating effect of restrained eating on the relation between reactive temperament and body mass index percentile, which differed according to gender: Restrained eating, which predicted weight gain, was more present in girls having a higher sensitivity to reward and in boys showing a higher sensitivity to punishment. No effect of regulative temperament was found. These results have important implications for weight management programmes, as they suggest that reducing restrained eating by working on temperament may help to control weight.
Recruitment of FoxP2‐expressing neurons to area X varies during song development

In adult songbirds, neural progenitors proliferate along the lateral ventricles. After migration, many of the subsequently formed neuroblasts integrate into the song nuclei HVC and Area X that participate in auditory‐guided vocal motor learning and singing. Recruitment of postembryonically generated neurons into HVC, rodent hippocampus, and olfactory bulb has been linked to learning and memory. The cellular identity and the role of postembryonically generated neurons in Area X are unknown. Here we describe that the majority of new neurons in postembryonic Area X of male zebra finches expressed DARPP32 but not choline acetyltransferase or parvalbumin. This suggests that they are spiny neurons. Retrogradely labeled neurons projecting to thalamic nucleus DLM were not renewed. The spiny neurons in Area X were recently shown to express FoxP2, a transcription factor critical for normal speech and language development in humans. Since increased FoxP2 mRNA expression was previously observed during periods of vocal plasticity we investigated whether this increase might be associated with neuronal recruitment. Consistent with their spiny phenotype, new neurons in Area X did express FoxP2 and recruitment increased transiently during the juvenile song learning period. Moreover we found that FoxP2 was expressed in the ventricular zone of adult songbirds but was absent from the germinal zones in adult mouse brains, the hippocampus, and the subventricular zone. Together these results raise the possibility that neuronal recruitment and FoxP2 expression in Area X are associated with vocal learning. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Develop Neurobiol, 2007.
Abstraction for Static and Dynamic Images Based on Visual Saliency

Reliable estimation of visual perception reflects understanding of the meaningful structure in an image. The paper describes a complete abstraction framework for static and dynamic images that explicitly responds to this goal, stylizes the corresponding salient and non-salient part differently by an edge preserving filter at a time while keep harmonious transition between the two parts. First, this paper introduces an automatic salient object segmentation algorithm to distinguish salient regions, and it is a saliency computation based local spatial neighbors. Taking into account the actual needs, the paper provides an interactive technology, this can be convenient for specifying image salient structure information on purpose. Based on the generated salient information mask, the paper then uses single-scale an isotropic filter to process the salient part, and use multi-scale an isotropic filter to process the non-salient part so that can implement a strong abstraction effect. Proposed method generates a kind of image and video abstraction that it represents a preferable visual effect. Experiments show that our algorithm could get the desired effect for processing a certain number of images and videos.
Genetic Ablation of Pannexin1 Protects Retinal Neurons from Ischemic Injury

Pannexin1 (Panx1) forms large nonselective membrane channel that is implicated in paracrine and inflammatory signaling. In vitro experiments suggested that Panx1 could play a key role in ischemic death of hippocampal neurons. Since retinal ganglion cells (RGCs) express high levels of Panx1 and are susceptible to ischemic induced injury, we hypothesized that Panx1 contributes to rapid and selective loss of these neurons in ischemia. To test this hypothesis, we induced experimental retinal ischemia followed by reperfusion in live animals with the Panx1 channel genetically ablated either in the entire mouse (Panx1 KO), or only in neurons using the conditional knockout (Panx1 CKO) technology. Here we report that two distinct neurotoxic processes are induced in RGCs by ischemia in the wild type mice but are inactivated in Panx1KO and Panx1 CKO animals. First, the post-ischemic permeation of RGC plasma membranes is suppressed, as assessed by dye transfer and calcium imaging assays ex vivo and in vitro. Second, the inflammasome-mediated activation of caspase-1 and the production of interleukin-1β in the Panx1 KO retinas are inhibited. Our findings indicate that post-ischemic neurotoxicity in the retina is mediated by previously uncharacterized pathways, which involve neuronal Panx1 and are intrinsic to RGCs. Thus, our work presents the in vivo evidence for neurotoxicity elicited by neuronal Panx1, and identifies this channel as a new therapeutic target in ischemic pathologies.
Bruton's tyrosine kinase: cell biology, sequence conservation, mutation spectrum, siRNA modifications, and expression profiling

Summary: Bruton's tyrosine kinase (Btk) is encoded by the gene that when mutated causes the primary immunodeficiency disease X‐linked agammaglobulinemia (XLA) in humans and X‐linked immunodeficiency (Xid) in mice. Btk is a member of the Tec family of protein tyrosine kinases (PTKs) and plays a vital, but diverse, modulatory role in many cellular processes. Mutations affecting Btk block B‐lymphocyte development. Btk is conserved among species, and in this review, we present the sequence of the full‐length rat Btk and find it to be analogous to the mouse Btk sequence. We have also analyzed the wealth of information compiled in the mutation database for XLA (BTKbase), representing 554 unique molecular events in 823 families and demonstrate that only selected amino acids are sensitive to replacement (P < 0.001). Although genotype–phenotype correlations have not been established in XLA, based on these findings, we hypothesize that this relationship indeed exists. Using short interfering‐RNA technology, we have previously generated active constructs downregulating Btk expression. However, application of recently established guidelines to enhance or decrease the activity was not successful, demonstrating the importance of the primary sequence. We also review the outcome of expression profiling, comparing B lymphocytes from XLA‐, Xid‐, and Btk‐knockout (KO) donors to healthy controls. Finally, in spite of a few genes differing in expression between Xid‐ and Btk‐KO mice, in vivo competition between cells expressing either mutation shows that there is no selective survival advantage of cells carrying one genetic defect over the other. We conclusively demonstrate that for the R28C‐missense mutant (Xid), there is no biologically relevant residual activity or any dominant negative effect versus other proteins.
Load-Balancing the Distance Computations in Record Linkage

In this paper, we propose a novel method for distributing the distance computations of record pairs generated by a blocking mechanism to the reduce tasks of a Map/Reduce system. The proposed solutions in the literature analyze the blocks and then construct a profile, which contains the number of record pairs in each block. However, this deterministic process, including all its variants, might incur considerable overhead given massive data sets. In contrast, our method utilizes two Map/Reduce jobs where the first job formulates the record pairs while the second job distributes these pairs to the reduce tasks, which perform the distance computations, using repetitive allocation rounds. In each such round, we utilize all the available reduce tasks on a random basis by generating permutations of their indexes. A series of experiments demonstrate an almost-equal distribution of the record pairs, or equivalently of the distance computations, to the reduce tasks, which makes our method a simple, yet efficient, solution for applying a blocking mechanism given massive data sets.
Redundant and Distinct Functions for Dynamin-1 and Dynamin-2 Isoforms

A role for dynamin in clathrin-mediated endocytosis is now well established. However, mammals express three closely related, tissue-specific dynamin isoforms, each with multiple splice variants. Thus, an important question is whether these isoforms and splice variants function in vesicle formation from distinct intracellular organelles. There are conflicting data as to a role for dynamin-2 in vesicle budding from the TGN. To resolve this issue, we compared the effects of overexpression of dominant-negative mutants of dynamin-1 (the neuronal isoform) and dynamin-2 (the ubiquitously expressed isoform) on endocytic and biosynthetic membrane trafficking in HeLa cells and polarized MDCK cells. Both dyn1(K44A) and dyn2(K44A) were potent inhibitors of receptor-mediated endocytosis; however neither mutant directly affected other membrane trafficking events, including transport mediated by four distinct classes of vesicles budding from the TGN. Dyn2(K44A) more potently inhibited receptor-mediated endocytosis than dyn1(K44A) in HeLa cells and at the basolateral surface of MDCK cells. In contrast, dyn1(K44A) more potently inhibited endocytosis at the apical surface of MDCK cells. The two dynamin isoforms have redundant functions in endocytic vesicle formation, but can be targeted to and function differentially at subdomains of the plasma membrane.
Modafinil improves real driving performance in patients with hypersomnia: a randomized double-blind placebo-controlled crossover clinical trial.

STUDY OBJECTIVE Patients with excessive daytime sleepiness (EDS) are at high risk for driving accidents, and physicians are concerned by the effect of alerting drugs on driving skills of sleepy patients. No study has up to now investigated the effect of modafinil (a reference drug to treat EDS in patients with hypersomnia) on on-road driving performance of patients suffering from central hypersomnia. The objective is to evaluate in patients with central hypersomnia the effect of a wake-promoting drug on real driving performance and to assess the relationship between objective sleepiness and driving performance. DESIGN AND PARTICIPANTS Randomized, crossover, double-blind placebo-controlled trial conducted among 13 patients with narcolepsy and 14 patients with idiopathic hypersomnia. Patients were randomly assigned to receive modafinil (400 mg) or placebo for 5 days prior to the driving test. Each condition was separated by at least 3 weeks of washout. MEASUREMENTS Mean number of Inappropriate Line Crossings, Standard Deviation of Lateral Position of the vehicle and mean sleep latency in the Maintenance of Wakefulness Test were assessed. RESULTS Modafinil reduced the mean number of Inappropriate Line Crossings and Standard Deviation of Lateral Position of the vehicle compared to placebo (F(1,25) = 4.88, P < 0.05 and F(1,25) = 3.87, P = 0.06 tendency). Mean sleep latency at the Maintenance of Wakefulness Test significantly correlated with the mean number of Inappropriate Line Crossings (r = -0.41, P < 0.001). CONCLUSIONS Modafinil improves driving performance in patients with narcolepsy and idiopathic hypersomnia. The Maintenance of Wakefulness Test is a suitable clinical tool to assess fitness to drive in this population.
Migrating to Integrated Electronic Medical Record: An Empirical Investigation of Physicians' Use Preference

While the Health Information System (HIS) market is expanding fast, the fact remains that HIS capability in the majority of adopting hospitals remains low. In this study, we anchor on social exchange theory to study the effects of switching costs and contextual benefits on a physician's direct/indirect use preference, in the context of migration from stand-alone HISs to interoperable HISs supporting integrated electronic medical record. Survey results from 80 physicians in a public hospital reveal that previously identified cost and benefit factors exhibit different effects on a physician’s use preference. Specifically, a physician who perceives higher learning cost, more technical support and higher group deindividuation is more likely to prefer indirect use of an interoperable Computerized Physician Order Entry System (CPOES). Comparatively, a physician who perceives higher transaction cost and higher incentive in using the interoperable CPOES is more likely to prefer direct use of the system.
Dynamics of trust in Clouds — Challenges and research agenda

This position paper focuses on deriving some of the challenges for trust establishment in Cloud Computing. We start by providing a conceptual model of Cloud infrastructure, and then discuss the dynamic nature of Cloud based on the provided model. We identify that the dynamic nature of a Cloud infrastructure is essential for its desirable properties (e.g. elasticity, resilience, availability, and reliability), but such dynamism results in novel challenges in Cloud context. Our contribution is identifying the effects of this dynamism on trust relationships, identifying the main challenges resulting from these effects and derive our research agenda.