Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Pentavalent replicon vaccines against botulinum neurotoxins and tetanus toxin using DNA-based Semliki Forest virus replicon vectors

The clostridial neurotoxin (CNT) family includes botulinum neurotoxin (BoNT), serotypes A, B, E, and F of which can cause human botulism, and tetanus neurotoxin (TeNT), which is the causative agent of tetanus. This suggests that the greatest need is for a multivalent or multiagent vaccine that provides protection against all 5 agents. In this study, we investigated the feasibility of generating several pentavalent replicon vaccines that protected mice against BoNTs and TeNT. First, we evaluated the potency of individual replicon DNA or particle vaccine against TeNT, which induced strong antibody and protective responses in BALB/c mice following 2 or 3 immunizations. Then, the individual replicon TeNT vaccines were combined with tetravalent BoNTs vaccines to prepare 4 types of pentavalent replicon vaccines. These replicon DNA or particle pentavalent vaccines could simultaneously and effectively induce antibody responses and protect effects against the 5 agents. Finally, a solid-phase assay showed that the sera of pentavalent replicon formulations-immunized mice inhibited the binding of THc to the ganglioside GT1b as the sera of individual replicon DNA or particle-immunized mice. These results indicated these pentavalent replicon vaccines could protect against the 4 BoNT serotypes and effectively neutralize and protect the TeNT. Therefore, our studies demonstrate the utility of combining replicon DNA or particle vaccines into multi-agent formulations as potent pentavalent vaccines for eliciting protective responses against BoNTs and TeNT.
Dietary Oily Fish Intake and Blood Pressure Levels: A Population‐Based Study

The effect of fish consumption on blood pressure is controversial. The authors measured blood pressure and calculated oily fish servings per week in 677 community‐dwellers aged 40 years and older living in rural coastal Ecuador. Using regression models with linear splines, the authors evaluated whether dietary fish intake was related to blood pressure levels, after adjusting for relevant confounders. Mean oily fish consumption was 9.1±5.6 servings per week. There was a nonlinear relationship between systolic pressure and fish servings. In the group of individuals consuming up to five servings per week, each serving significantly reduced systolic pressure by 2.3 mm Hg (P=.020). Any extra serving provided no further effects. The study shows an inverse relationship between oily fish consumption and systolic pressure. Currently recommended amounts of dietary oily fish intake per week (1–2 servings) might be insufficient to exert beneficial effects of fish in the control of blood pressure.
Time Reversal Focusing for Pipeline Structural Health Monitoring

This paper investigates the use of time reversal processing techniques to compensate for multimodal and dispersive effects in a low-power structural health monitoring system for pipelines. We demonstrate the use of time reversal as a pitch-catch operation between two transducer arrays to illuminate changes caused by damage on a pipe. We then show and discuss how differences in the severity of damage affect the signals recorded at the receiving transducer array and demonstrate how these results can be interpreted to measure those changes. Our results are demonstrated through experimental observation.
Surface plasmon enhanced light-emitting diode

A method for enhancing the emission properties of light-emitting diodes, by coupling to surface plasmons, is analyzed both theoretically and experimentally. The analyzed structure consists of a semiconductor emitter layer thinner than /spl lambda//2 sandwiched between two metal films. If a periodic pattern is defined in the top semitransparent metal layer by lithography, it is possible to efficiently couple out the light emitted from the semiconductor and to simultaneously enhance the spontaneous emission rate. For the analyzed designs, we theoretically estimate extraction efficiencies as high as 37% and Purcell factors of up to 4.5. We have experimentally measured photoluminescence intensities of up to 46 times higher in fabricated structures compared to unprocessed wafers. The increased light emission is due to an increase in the efficiency and an increase in the pumping intensity resulting from trapping of pump photons within the microcavity.
Performance driven multi-objective distributed scheduling for parallel computations

With the advent of many-core architectures and strong need for Petascale (and Exascale) performance in scientific domains and industry analytics, efficient scheduling of parallel computations for higher productivity and performance has become very important. Further, movement of massive amounts (Terabytes to Petabytes) of data is very expensive, which necessitates affinity driven computations. Therefore, distributed scheduling of parallel computations on multiple places 1 needs to optimize multiple performance objectives: follow affinity maximally and ensure efficient space, time and message complexity. Simultaneous consideration of these objectives makes distributed scheduling a particularly challenging problem. In addition, parallel computations have data dependent execution patterns which requires online scheduling to effectively optimize the computation orchestration as it unfolds. This paper presents an online algorithm for affinity driven distributed scheduling of multi-place 2 parallel computations. To optimize multiple performance objectives simultaneously, our algorithm uses a low time and message complexity mechanism for ensuring affinity and a randomized work-stealing mechanism within places for load balancing. Theoretical analysis of the expected and probabilistic lower and upper bounds on time and message complexity of this algorithm has been provided. On multi-core clusters such as Blue Gene/P (MPP architecture) and Intel multicore cluster, we demonstrate performance close to the custom MPI+Pthreads code. Further, strong, weak and data (increasing input data size) scalability have been demonstrated on multi-core clusters. Using well known benchmarks, we demonstrate 16% to 30% performance gain as compared to Cilk [6] on multi-core Intel Xeon 5570 (NUMA) architecture. Detailed experimental analysis illustrates efficient space (main memory) utilization as well. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time multi-objective affinity driven distributed scheduling algorithm has been designed, theoretically analyzed and experimentally evaluated in a multi-place setup for multi-core cluster architectures.
Longitudinal study of changing psychological outcomes following the Victorian Black Saturday bushfires

Objectives: To map the changing prevalence and predictors of psychological outcomes in affected communities 5 years following the Black Saturday bushfires in Victoria. Method: Follow-up assessment of longitudinal cohort study in high, medium and non-affected communities in Victoria, Australia. Participants included 1017 respondents (Wave 1) interviewed via telephone and web-based survey between December 2011 and January 2013, and 735 (76.1%) eligible participants were retested between July and November 2014 (Wave 2). The survey included measures of fire-related and subsequent stressful events, probable posttraumatic stress disorder, major depressive episode, alcohol use and severe distress. Results: There were reduced rates of fire-related posttraumatic stress disorder (8.7% vs 12.1%), general posttraumatic stress disorder (14.7% vs 18.2%), major depressive episode (9.0% vs 10.9%) and serious mental illness (5.4% vs 7.8%). Rates of resilience increased over time (81.8% vs 77.1%), and problem alcohol use remained high across Wave 1 (22.1%) and Wave 2 (21.4%). The most robust predictor of later development of fire-related posttraumatic stress disorder (odds ratio: 2.11; 95% confidence interval: [1.22, 3.65]), general posttraumatic stress disorder (odds ratio: 3.15; 95% confidence interval: [1.98, 5.02]), major depressive episode (odds ratio: 2.86; 95% confidence interval: [1.74, 4.70]), serious mental illness (odds ratio: 2.67; 95% confidence interval: [0.57, 1.72]) or diminished resilience (odds ratio: 2.01; 95% confidence interval: [1.32, 3.05]) was extent of recent life stressors. Conclusion: Although rates of mental health problems diminished over time, they remained higher than national levels. Findings suggest that policy-makers need to recognize that the mental health consequences of disasters can persist for many years after the event and need to allocate resources towards those who are most at risk as a result of substantive losses and ongoing life stressors.
The Effect of Positive and Negative Feedback on Risk-Taking across Different Contexts

Preferences for risky choices have often been shown to be unstable and context-dependent. Though people generally avoid gambles with mixed outcomes, a phenomenon often attributed to loss aversion, contextual factors can impact this dramatically. For example, people typically prefer risky options after a financial loss, while generally choosing safer options after a monetary gain. However, it is unclear what exactly contributes to these preference shifts as a function of prior outcomes, as these gain/loss outcomes are usually confounded with participant performance, and therefore it is unclear whether these effects are driven purely by the monetary gains or losses, or rather by success or failure at the actual task. Here, we experimentally separated the effects of monetary gains/losses from performance success/failure prior to a standard risky choice. Participants performed a task in which they experienced contextual effects: 1) monetary gain or loss based directly on performance, 2) monetary gain or loss that was randomly awarded and was, crucially, independent from performance, and 3) success or failure feedback based on performance, but without any monetary incentive. Immediately following these positive/negative contexts, participants were presented with a gain-loss gamble that they had to decide to either play or pass. We found that risk preferences for identical sets of gambles were biased by positive and negative contexts containing monetary gains and losses, but not by contexts containing performance feedback. This data suggests that the observed framing effects are driven by aversion for monetary losses and not simply by the positive or negative valence of the context, or by potential moods resulting from positive or negative contexts. These results highlight the specific context dependence of risk preferences.
Scattering of SH-waves by a Griffith crack in a long strip at asymmetric position

The scattering of SH-waves by a Griffith crack in an infinitely long elastic strip situated at an asymmetric position has been analyzed. Applying Fourier transform, the mixed boundary value problem has been reduced to the solution of dual integral equations which finally has been reduced to the solution of a Fredholm integral equation of second kind. The numerical values of stress intensity factor, crack opening displacement, and scattered field outside the crack have been illustrated graphically to show the effect of asymmetry of the crack position.
Platelet morphology, soluble P selectin and platelet P-selectin in acute ischaemic stroke

Summary The pathophysiology of ischaemic stroke involves the platelet. In this study, we hypothesised that abnormalities in platelet morphology, as well as soluble (sPsel) and total platelet P-selectin (pPsel) levels would be present in patients presenting with an acute ischaemic stroke, and that these changes would improve at ≥ 3 months’ follow-up. We studied 59 hypertensive patients (34 male; mean age 68± 12 years) who presented with an acute ischaemic stroke (ictus< 24 hours), and compared them with 2 groups: (i) age-, sex-and ethnic-origin matched normotensive healthy controls; and (ii) uncomplicated ‘ high risk’ hypertensive patients as ‘ risk factor control’ subjects. Platelet morphology (volume and mass) was quantified, and sPsel (plasma marker of platelet activation) was measured (ELISA) in citrated plasma. The mass of P-selectin in each platelet (pPsel) was determined by lysing a fixed number of platelets and then determining the levels of P-selectin in the lysate. Results show that patients who presented with a stroke had significantly higher levels of sPsel and pPsel (both p< 0.001), compared to the normal controls and the hypertensive patients. Patients with an acute stroke had lower mean platelet mass (MPM) and mean platelet volume (MPV) as compared to the uncomplicated hypertensive patients, who had significantly higher mean MPM and MPV values, as compared to normal controls. On follow-up, the levels of both sPsel (p = 0.011), pPsel (< 0.001) and MPV (p = 0.03) were significantly lower. Mean MPM levels remained unchanged. We conclude that patients presenting with an acute ischaemic stroke have activated platelets, as evident by the increased levels of soluble and platelet P-selectin. Further study of platelet activation and the role of P-selectin is warranted.
Kdetrees: Non-parametric Estimation of Phylogenetic Tree Distributions

MOTIVATION Although the majority of gene histories found in a clade of organisms are expected to be generated by a common process (e.g. the coalescent process), it is well known that numerous other coexisting processes (e.g. horizontal gene transfers, gene duplication and subsequent neofunctionalization) will cause some genes to exhibit a history distinct from those of the majority of genes. Such 'outlying' gene trees are considered to be biologically interesting, and identifying these genes has become an important problem in phylogenetics. RESULTS We propose and implement kdetrees, a non-parametric method for estimating distributions of phylogenetic trees, with the goal of identifying trees that are significantly different from the rest of the trees in the sample. Our method compares favorably with a similar recently published method, featuring an improvement of one polynomial order of computational complexity (to quadratic in the number of trees analyzed), with simulation studies suggesting only a small penalty to classification accuracy. Application of kdetrees to a set of Apicomplexa genes identified several unreliable sequence alignments that had escaped previous detection, as well as a gene independently reported as a possible case of horizontal gene transfer. We also analyze a set of Epichloë genes, fungi symbiotic with grasses, successfully identifying a contrived instance of paralogy. AVAILABILITY AND IMPLEMENTATION Our method for estimating tree distributions and identifying outlying trees is implemented as the R package kdetrees and is available for download from CRAN.
Neurotensin induces calcium oscillations in cultured amacrine cells

Abstract The peptide, neurotensin, is found in a class of amacrine cells synapsing chiefly withother amacrine cells in the chicken retina (Li & Lam, 1990; Watt et al., 1991). Toinvestigate the possible effects of neurotensin, we have used Ca2+ imaging to measure cytosolic Ca2+ concentrations in cultured chick amacrine cells. Following a delay of about 2 min, neurotensin (300 nM) induced oscillations in Ca2+ concentration that typically had a period of 2 min and peak values of about 300 nM when averaged over the cell body. The phospholipase C inhibitors U-73, 112 and 4′-bromophenacyl bromide terminated oscillations induced by neurotensin but the protein kinase inhibitors H7 and staurosporine did not inhibit oscillations, increasing their frequency instead. In the absence of external Ca2+, neurotensin induced only a single Ca2+ transient, much briefer than when external Ca2+ was present. Together these results suggest that neurotensin activates phospholipase C, thereby producing IP3 that triggers Ca2+ release from an internal store. Although this released Ca2+ contributes to periodic Ca2+ peaks, the majority of cytosolic Ca2+, even in the first peak, comes from Ca2+ influx across the plasmalemma.
Comparing interest management algorithms for massively multiplayer games

Broadcasting all state changes to every player of a massively multiplayer game is not a viable solution. To successfully overcome the challenge of scale, massively multiplayer games have to employ sophisticated interest management techniques that only send relevant state changes to each player. This paper compares the performance of different interest management algorithms based on measurements obtained in a real massively multiplayer game using human and computer-generated player actions. We show that interest management algorithms that take into account obstacles in the world reduce the number of update messages between players by up to a factor of 6, and that some computationally inexpensive tile-based interest management algorithms can approximate ideal visibility-based interest management at very low cost. The experiments also show that measurements obtained with computer-controlled players performing random actions can approximate measurements of games played by real humans, provided that the starting positions of the random players are chosen adequately. As the size of the world and the number of players of massively multiplayer games increases, adaptive interest management techniques such as the ones studied in this paper will become increasingly important.
SPECTRAL INDUCED POLARIZATION MEASUREMENTS ON UNSATURATED , UNCONSOLIDATED SEDIMENTS

Understanding the Spectral Induced Polarization (SIP) response to saturation is required to improve application of this geophysical technique in the vadose zone. SIP measurements (0.11000 Hz) were conducted on three unconsolidated sediments during evaporative drying. Sample grain size distribution was determined from laser particle size diffraction measurements. The dependence of the real and imaginary conductivity components on frequency and degree of saturation was determined. Both conductivity components exhibit an Archie-type power law dependence on saturation. However, the imaginary conductivity is less dependent on saturation. We find that, for each sample, the low frequency imaginary (surface) conductivity saturation exponent is approximately about half the low frequency real (bulk) conductivity exponent. The dependence of the imaginary conductivity exponent on frequency depends on sample type. For a fine sample, the imaginary saturation exponent is effectively frequency independent. For a coarse sample, the imaginary conductivity saturation dependence decreases above 10 Hz. This is tentatively related to the difference in the size of polarizable pores within each sample.
Study on springback behavior of carbon steel during single-point dieless forming based on neural network method

Springback phenomenon is one of the most important factors affecting the machining accuracy in dieless forming processes and it has been studied by many scholars. Because of its highly nonlinear influence, there is no good numerical or analytical method to solve the springback problem. In this paper, accroding to the stamping experiments of strip sheet based on single point dieless forming machine tool, the effect of the stamping increment step and the stamping position on springback and the springback prediction method are studied. The experimental results show that the stamping increment step has little effect on springback, and when the stamping point is closer to the support position, the springback of the plate is smaller. Moreover, a neural network model (ANFIS model) based on experimental data is established to predict the springback and the effectiveness of this method is verified by testing.
Role of Inducible Nitric Oxide Synthase in Skeletal Adaptation to Acute Increases in Mechanical Loading

To clarify the role of nitric oxide (NO) in regulation of bone metabolism in response to skeletal loading, we examined inducible NO synthase (iNOS) gene knockout mice in the tail‐suspension model. Histomorphometric analyses of proximal tibias revealed that 7 days of tail suspension decreased the bone volume (BV/TV) and bone formation rate (BFR/BS) and increased the osteoclast surface (Oc.S/BS) in mice with all iNOS genotypes. Both iNOS+/+ and iNOS+/− mice responded to subsequent 14‐day reloading, with increases in BV/TV and BFR/BS and a decrease in Oc.S/BS, whereas these responses were abolished in iNOS−/− mice. The osteoblasts flattened after tail suspension appeared cuboidal during subsequent reloading. Immunoreactivity for iNOS was detected in these osteoblasts and osteocytes by immunohistochemistry. These defective responses after reloading were rescued in iNOS−/− mice by treatment with an NO donor nitroglycerine (NG). Conversely, the responses in iNOS+/+ mice were inhibited by treatment with an NOS inhibitor aminoguanidine (AG). In bone marrow cell cultures, mineralized nodules derived from iNOS−/− mice after reloading were significantly reduced. Taken together, our results suggest that NO generated by iNOS in osteoblasts plays a critical role in adjusting bone turnover and increasing osteogenic activity in response to the acute increase in mechanical loading after tail suspension.
Low-latency TCP/IP stack for data center applications

TCP/IP is widely used both in the Internet as well as in data centers. The protocol makes very few assumptions about the underlying network and provides useful guarantees such as reliable transmission, in-order delivery, or control flow. The price for this functionality is complexity, latency, and computational overhead, which is especially pronounced in software implementations. While for Internet communication this is acceptable, the overhead is too high in data centers. In this paper, we explore how to optimize a TCP/IP stack running on an FPGA for data center applications with an emphasis on data processing (e.g., key value stores). Using a key-value store and a low-latency consensus protocol implemented on an FPGA as an example of the requirements that arise in data centers, we provide an extensive analysis of the overheads of TCP/IP and the solutions that can be adopted to minimize such an overhead. The proposed optimized TCP/IP stack minimizes tail latencies (a key metric in distributed data processing) and is efficiently implemented so as to be able to share the FPGA with application logic.
The validity of the Net Promoter Score as a business performance measure

Customer satisfaction and customer loyalty have become very important concepts in modern management and quality models. A number of measurement frameworks have been proposed, and especially the American Customer Satisfaction Index and its European counterpart, EPSI Rating, have been accepted as good solutions. In 2003, however, Reichheld published an article in HBR, in which he claims that the Net Promoter Score (introduced by himself), is the only number you need to grow, and the only number you need to manage customer loyalty. We claim that the NPS is an inefficient and unreliable measure of customer loyalty and this paper clearly demonstrate that the NPS is by far inferior to the standard measures of loyalty used by the ACSI and EPSI Rating.
Stochastic blockmodels with growing number of classes

We present asymptotic and finite-sample results on the use of stochastic blockmodels for the analysis of network data. We show that the fraction of misclassified network nodes converges in probability to zero under maximum likelihood fitting when the number of classes is allowed to grow as the root of the network size and the average network degree grows at least poly-logarithmically in this size. We also establish finite-sample confidence bounds on maximum-likelihood blockmodel parameter estimates from data comprising independent Bernoulli random variates; these results hold uniformly over class assignment. We provide simulations verifying the conditions sufficient for our results, and conclude by fitting a logit parameterization of a stochastic blockmodel with covariates to a network data example comprising self-reported school friendships, resulting in block estimates that reveal residual structure.