Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Differential Concentration-Dependent Effect of IVIg on Neutrophil Functions: Relevance for Anti-Microbial and Anti-Inflammatory Mechanisms

Background Polymorphonuclear neutrophils (PMN) play a key role in host defences against invading microorganisms but can also potentiate detrimental inflammatory reactions in case of excessive or misdirected responses. Intravenous immunoglobulins (IVIg) are used to treat patients with immune deficiencies and, at higher doses, in autoimmune, allergic and systemic inflammatory disorders. Methodology/Principal Findings We used flow cytometry to examine the effects of IVIg on PMN functions and survival, using whole-blood conditions in order to avoid artifacts due to isolation procedures. IVIg at low concentrations induced PMN activation, as reflected by decreased L-selectin and increased CD11b expression at the PMN surface, oxidative burst enhancement, and prolonged cell survival. In contrast, IVIg at higher concentrations inhibited LPS-induced CD11b degranulation and oxidative burst priming, and counteracted LPS-induced PMN lifespan prolongation. Conclusions/Significance IVIg appears to have differential, concentration-dependent effects on PMN, possibly supporting the use of IVIg as either an anti-microbial or an anti-inflammatory agent.
Effects of fast-food consumption on energy intake and diet quality among children in a national household survey.

BACKGROUND Fast food has become a prominent feature of the diet of children in the United States and, increasingly, throughout the world. However, few studies have examined the effects of fast-food consumption on any nutrition or health-related outcome. The aim of this study was to test the hypothesis that fast-food consumption adversely affects dietary factors linked to obesity risk. METHODS This study included 6212 children and adolescents 4 to 19 years old in the United States participating in the nationally representative Continuing Survey of Food Intake by Individuals conducted from 1994 to 1996 and the Supplemental Children's Survey conducted in 1998. We examined the associations between fast-food consumption and measures of dietary quality using between-subject comparisons involving the whole cohort and within-subject comparisons involving 2080 individuals who ate fast food on one but not both survey days. RESULTS On a typical day, 30.3% of the total sample reported consuming fast food. Fast-food consumption was highly prevalent in both genders, all racial/ethnic groups, and all regions of the country. Controlling for socioeconomic and demographic variables, increased fast-food consumption was independently associated with male gender, older age, higher household incomes, non-Hispanic black race/ethnicity, and residing in the South. Children who ate fast food, compared with those who did not, consumed more total energy (187 kcal; 95% confidence interval [CI]: 109-265), more energy per gram of food (0.29 kcal/g; 95% CI: 0.25-0.33), more total fat (9 g; 95% CI: 5.0-13.0), more total carbohydrate (24 g; 95% CI: 12.6-35.4), more added sugars (26 g; 95% CI: 18.2-34.6), more sugar-sweetened beverages (228 g; 95% CI: 184-272), less fiber (-1.1 g; 95% CI: -1.8 to -0.4), less milk (-65 g; 95% CI: -95 to -30), and fewer fruits and nonstarchy vegetables (-45 g; 95% CI: -58.6 to -31.4). Very similar results were observed by using within-subject analyses in which subjects served as their own controls: that is, children ate more total energy and had poorer diet quality on days with, compared with without, fast food. CONCLUSION Consumption of fast food among children in the United States seems to have an adverse effect on dietary quality in ways that plausibly could increase risk for obesity.
Comparative Study with Modified Method for Target Tracking in Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless Sensor Networks are networks of large number of tiny, battery powered sensor nodes having limited on-board storage, processing, and radio capabilities to monitor physical or environmental conditions, such as temperature, vibration, pressure, sound or motion, and then collectively send this information to a central computing system, called the base station or sink. Using wireless sensor networks (WSN) to track a moving object provided a practical solution to a wide variety of applications including, for example, wild life, military operations, intruder tracking and monitoring in indoor office buildings. While much work has been done in this area, failures are not considered in most of the existing solutions. However, failures have to be handled carefully in target tracking applications because of their unpredictable and dynamic nature of communication, such as sensor energy depletion, severe environment conditions, unstable communication links and malicious attacks. Traditional approaches of fault tolerance are not well suited to address these new challenges. Therefore we have proposed a Hierarchical Localization Tracking Scheme (HLTS) for the tracking of moving object. Extensive simulations are carried out using NS-2 show that our algorithm achieves good performance.
Effects of Altering Trunk Position during Landings on Patellar Tendon Force and Pain

Purpose This study aimed to verify the immediate effects of altering sagittal plane trunk position during jump landings on lower limb biomechanics, patellar tendon force, and pain of athletes with and without patellar tendinopathy. Methods Twenty-one elite male athletes were categorized into three groups: athletes with patellar tendinopathy (TG; n = 7), asymptomatic athletes with patellar tendon abnormalities (n = 7), and asymptomatic athletes without tendon abnormalities (CG; n = 7). A biomechanical evaluation was conducted while the athletes performed drop landings from a bench in a self-selected trunk position (SS). Afterward, the athletes were randomly assigned to land with either a flexed trunk position (FLX) or an extended trunk position (EXT). Variables of interest for this study included sagittal plane peak kinematics, kinetics, patellar tendon force, and pain during the landing tasks. Results Peak patellar tendon force, knee extensor moment, and knee pain decreased in the FLX landing compared with the SS landing, regardless of group. In addition, peak patellar tendon force, knee extensor moment, and vertical ground reaction force were smaller in the FLX landing compared with the EXT landing. The TG had smaller peak ankle dorsiflexion compared with the CG during jump landings, regardless of trunk position. Conclusions Landing with greater trunk flexion decreased patellar tendon force in elite jumping athletes. An immediate decrease in knee pain was also observed in symptomatic athletes with a more flexed trunk position during landing. Increasing trunk flexion during landing might be an important strategy to reduce tendon overload in jumping athletes.
Homogeneous linewidth of excitons in semimagnetic CdTe/Cd1-xMnxTe multiple quantum wells.

We report on a detailed experimental study of the homogeneous linewidth of heavy-hole excitons in semimagnetic CdTe/${\mathrm{Cd}}_{1\mathrm{\ensuremath{-}}\mathit{x}}$${\mathrm{Mn}}_{\mathit{x}}$Te multiple quantum wells. Transient four-wave-mixing experiments are used to obtain the homogeneous linewidth by measuring the dephasing time of the excitons. We find a dephasing time of 2.2 ps corresponding to a homogeneous linewidth of 0.6 meV at low temperature and moderate exciton density. The homogeneous linewidth increases linearly with both exciton density and lattice temperature. The contributions of exciton\char21{}acoustic-phonon scattering, exciton-exciton interaction, and disorder to the homogeneous linewidth are determined.
Attribute Efficient Linear Regression with Distribution-Dependent Sampling

We consider a budgeted learning setting, where the learner can only choose and observe a small subset of the attributes of each training example. We develop efficient algorithms for Ridge and Lasso linear regression, which utilize the geometry of the data by a novel distribution-dependent sampling scheme, and have excess risk bounds which are better a factor of up to O(√d/k) over the state-of-the-art, where d is the dimension and k + 1 is the number of observed attributes per example. Moreover, under reasonable assumptions, our algorithms are the first in our setting which can provably use less attributes than full-information algorithms, which is the main concern in budgeted learning. We complement our theoretical analysis with experiments which support our claims.
A brachiating robot controller

We report on our empirical studies of a new controller for a two-link brachiating robot. Motivated by the pendulum-like motion of an ape's brachiation, we encode this task as the output of a "target dynamical system". Numerical simulations indicate that the resulting controller solves a number of brachiation problems that we term the "ladder", "swing-up", and "rope" problems. Preliminary analysis provides some explanation for this success. The proposed controller is implemented on a physical system in our laboratory. The robot achieves behaviors including "swing locomotion" and "swing up" and is capable of continuous locomotion over several rungs of a ladder. We discuss a number of formal questions whose answers will be required to gain a full understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of this approach.
COMPACT MULTIBAND FOLDED IFA FOR MOBILE APPLICATION

A compact multiband Inverted-F Antenna (IFA) for the use in a mobile phone is presented. By adopting a novel folded 3-D structure, a quarter-wave resonator and a parasitic strip, the proposed antenna covers eight bands and exhibits reduced electrical size and low proflle. S11 less than i6dB is obtained in the GSM900, GSM1800, DCS, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, WLAN5.2, WLAN5.8 and the WiMAX bands. The dimensions of the proposed antenna with the 3-D structure are only 39:6 £ 4:3 £ 3:4mm 3 , which are very small in respect with other antennas in mobile terminal devices. A prototype of the proposed antenna is fabricated and measured. Measured and simulated results exhibit good bandwidth, radiation patterns and e-ciency across all eight bands.
The eShopmonitor: A comprehensive data extraction tool for monitoring Web sites

Typical commercial Web sites publish information from multiple back-end data sources; these data sources are also updated very frequently. Given the size of most commercial sites today, it becomes essential to have an automated means of checking for correctness and consistency of data. The eShopmonitor allows users to specify items of interest to be tracked, monitors these items on the Web pages, and reports on any changes observed. Our solution comprises a crawler, a miner, a reporter, and a user component that work together to achieve the above functionality. The miner learns to locate the items of interest on a class of pages based on just one sample supplied by the user, via the user interface (UI) provided. The learning algorithm is based on the XPaths of the Document Object Model (DOM) of the page.
Oral ulcers in kidney transplant recipients treated with sirolimus and mycophenolate mofetil

Background. In an attempt to reduce calcineurin inhibitor toxicity, transplant patients treated with tacrolimus can be switched to maintenance treatment with sirolimus. Methods. In a prospective, randomized, multicenter trial, 33 kidney transplant recipients on steroid-free maintenance treatment with tacrolimus and mycophenolate mofetil continued tacrolimus and mycophenolate mofetil (control group, n=18) or were converted from tacrolimus to sirolimus (study group, n=15) at 1 year after transplantation. Results. The study was prematurely stopped as a result of a cluster of nine patients suffering from painful oral ulcerations in the study group. Oral ulcerations did not occur in the control group. The authors here report on the individual cases suffering from this side effect of the instituted immunosuppressive regimen. Conclusions. The authors review the literature with respect to the occurrence of oral ulcers associated with the use of sirolimus or mycophenolate mofetil and speculate on the causes of the high incidence of oral ulcers in their study group. Possible explanations are overimmunosuppression during the period of the conversion from tacrolimus to sirolimus without antiviral prophylaxis, the use of the oral emulsion instead of tablets, or the lack of corticosteroid co-administration.
Feeling what you hear: tactile feedback for navigation of audio graphs

Access to digitally stored numerical data is currently very limited for sight impaired people. Graphs and visualizations are often used to analyze relationships between numerical data, but the current methods of accessing them are highly visually mediated. Representing data using audio feedback is a common method of making data more accessible, but methods of navigating and accessing the data are often serial in nature and laborious. Tactile or haptic displays could be used to provide additional feedback to support a point-and-click type interaction for the visually impaired. A requirements capture conducted with sight impaired computer users produced a review of current accessibility technologies, and guidelines were extracted for using tactile feedback to aid navigation. The results of a qualitative evaluation with a prototype interface are also presented. Providing an absolute position input device and tactile feedback allowed the users to explore the graph using tactile and proprioceptive cues in a manner analogous to point-and-click techniques.
Chemoresistance of Human Monocyte-Derived Dendritic Cells Is Regulated by IL-17A

Dendritic cells initiate adaptive immune responses, leading either to control cancer by effector T cells or to exacerbate cancer by regulatory T cells that inhibit IFN-γ-mediated Th1-type response. Dendritic cells can also induce Th17-type immunity, mediated by IL-17A. However, the controversial role of this cytokine in cancer requires further investigations. We generated dendritic cells from peripheral blood monocytes to investigate lifespan, phenotype and chemoresistance of dendritic cells, treated with IL-17A with or without IFN-γ. Studying the expression of Bcl-2 family members, we demonstrated that dendritic cells constitutively express one pro-survival Bcl-2 member: MCL1. Immature dendritic cells were CD40lowHLADRlow CD1a+ MCL1+, did not express CD14, CD68 or BCL2A1, and displayed a short 2-day lifespan. IL-17A-treated DC exhibited a semi-mature (CD40high HLADRlow) pre-M2 (CCL22+ CD206+ CD163+ IL1RN+ IL-10− CXCL10− IL-12−) mixed (CD1a+ CD14+ CD68+) macrophage-dendritic cell phenotype. They efficiently exerted mannose receptor-mediated endocytosis and did not produce superoxide anions, in the absence of TLR engagement. Interestingly, IL-17A promoted a long-term survival of dendritic cells, beyond 12 days, that correlated to BCL2A1 induction, a pro-survival Bcl-2 family member. BCL2A1 transcription was activated by NF-κB, downstream of IL-17A transduction. Thus, immature dendritic cells only express MCL1, whereas IL-17A-treated dendritic cells concomitantly expressed two pro-survival Bcl-2 family members: MCL1 and BCL2A1. These latter developed chemoresistance to 11 of the 17 chemotherapy agents tested. However, high doses of either vinblastine or cytarabine decreased MCL1 expression and induced dendritic cell death. When IL-17A is produced in vivo, administration of anti-IL-17A biotherapy may impair dendritic cell survival by targeting BCL2A1 expression. Consequently, depending on the effector or regulatory role of dendritic cells, blocking IL-17A, may be either dangerous or beneficial for cancer outcomes, thus contributing to the apparent controversy around the role of IL-17A in cancer.
Risk of subarachnoid hemorrhage after surgical treatment of unruptured cerebral aneurysms.

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Recent progress in noninvasive imaging techniques has resulted in increased detection of unruptured aneurysms. Although many neurosurgeons advocate surgical intervention for such unruptured aneurysms, the long-term results of surgery for unruptured aneurysms have not been carefully investigated. METHODS We analyzed 173 consecutive patients who had unruptured intracranial saccular aneurysm(s) detected by angiography that was performed for reasons other than subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH). Of those, 115 cases were surgically treated and studied. All patients were followed up for either SAH, repeat treatment of aneurysms, or death. The median follow-up period was 8.8 years. RESULTS Four of the 115 patients suffered SAH either from a de novo aneurysm (2) or from regrowth of clipped aneurysm (1), or from regrowth after wrapping (1). Additionally, 1 patient also suffered SAH from an unstudied basilar aneurysm. One patient was incidentally found to have de novo aneurysm and underwent reoperation 14 years after the first operation. The cumulative risk for SAH for the 114 cases excluding the basilar aneurysm case was 1.4% in 10 years and 12.4% in 20 years. CONCLUSIONS Although this study confirmed the long-term efficacy of clipping unruptured aneurysms, the risk of SAH was high compared with that in the general population, even after treatment. Considering the high mortality rate of SAH, long-term follow-up by angiography may be warranted for patients with surgically treated unruptured aneurysms.
Magnetic resonance imaging white matter hyperintensities and brain volume in the prediction of mild cognitive impairment and dementia.

OBJECTIVE To determine whether magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) white matter hyperintensities (WMH), whole-brain atrophy, and cardiovascular risk factors predict the development of cognitive decline and dementia. DESIGN Subjects were recruited into this prospective cohort study and followed for incident cognitive decline for mean (SD) 6.0 (4.1) years. Magnetic resonance imaging dual-echo sequences, obtained at baseline, were used to determine the volume of WMH and the brain parenchymal fraction (BPF), the proportion of the intracranial cavity occupied by brain. White matter hyperintensity volume was analyzed as the percentage of intracranial volume (WMHr); "high WMH" was defined as a WMHr more than 1 SD above the mean. SETTING General community. PATIENTS Volunteer sample consisting of 67 subjects with normal cognition and 156 subjects with mild cognitive impairment (MCI). MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Time to diagnosis of MCI (among those with normal cognition at baseline) or time to diagnosis of dementia, either all-cause or probable Alzheimer disease (AD) (among those with MCI at baseline). Cox proportional hazards models were used for multivariable analysis. RESULTS High WMH was a predictor of progression from normal to MCI (adjusted hazard ratio [HR], 3.30; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.33-8.17; P= .01) but not conversion from MCI to all-cause dementia. Conversely, BPF did not predict progression from normal to MCI but did predict conversion to dementia (adjusted HR, 1.10 for each 1% decrease in BPF; 95% CI, 1.02-1.19; P= .02). When conversion to AD dementia was considered as the outcome, BPF was likewise a predictor (adjusted HR, 1.16 for each 1% decrease in BPF; 95% CI, 1.08-1.24; P< .001), but high WMH was not. Past tobacco smoking was associated with both progression from normal to MCI (adjusted HR, 2.71; 95% CI, 1.12-6.55; P= .03) and conversion to all-cause dementia (adjusted HR, 2.08; 95% CI, 1.13-3.82; P= .02), but not AD dementia. CONCLUSIONS These findings suggest that WMH are associated with the risk of progressing from normal to MCI. In persons whose cognitive abilities are already impaired, BPF predicts the conversion to dementia.
Authenticated Index Structures for AggregationQueries in Outsourced Databases

In an outsourced database system the data owner publishes information through a number of remote, untrusted servers with the goal of enabling clients to access and query the data more efficiently. As clients cannot trust servers, query authentication is an essential component in any outsourced database system. Clients should be given the capability to verify that the answers provided by the servers are correct with respect to the actual data published by the owner. While existing workprovides authentication techniques for selection and projection queries, there is a lackof techniques for authenticating aggregation queries. This article introduces the first known authenticated index structures for aggregation queries. First, we design an index that features good performance characteristics for static environments, where few or no updates occur to the data. Then, we extend these ideas and propose more involved structures for the dynamic case, where the database owner is allowed to update the data arbitrarily. Our structures feature excellent average case performance for authenticating queries with multiple aggregate attributes and multiple selection predicates. We also implement working prototypes of the proposed techniques and experimentally validate the correctness of our ideas.
Image Processing by Simulated Annealing

It is shown that simulated annealing, a statistical mechanics method recently proposed as a tool in solving complex optimization problems, can be used in problems arising in image processing. The problems examined are the estimation of the parameters necessary to describe a geometrical pattern corrupted by noise, the smoothing of bi-level images, and the process of halftoning a continuous-level image. The analogy between the system to be optimized and an equivalent physical system, whose ground state is sought, is put forward by showing that some of these problems are formally equivalent to ground state problems for two-dimensional Ising spin systems. In the case of low signal-to-noise ratios (particularly in image smoothing), the methods proposed here give better results than those obtained with standard techniques.
Ageing-associated aberration in meiosis of oocytes from senescence-accelerated mice.

BACKGROUND The senescence-accelerated mouse (SAM) has been shown to exhibit ageing-associated mitochondrial dysfunction and oxidative stress, and early decline in fertility. METHODS We compared meiotic progression of germinal vesicle oocytes between young (2-3 months) and old (10-14 months) SAM mice using triple immunostaining and fluorescence microscopy as well as Pol-Scope imaging. RESULTS At 8-9 h of in-vitro maturation (IVM), most young SAM oocytes (86%, 32/37) were at meiosis I (MI) stage, with chromosomes aligned in the mid-region of MI spindles, whereas disrupted MI spindles and/or chromosome misalignments (45%, 18/40) and a few oocytes (20%, 8/40) with abnormal MII spindles were found in old SAM oocytes. At 15-17 h of IVM, old SAM oocytes, despite errors at MI stage, extruded a first polar body at an incidence of 88% (n = 85), which did not differ from that (92%, n = 106) of young SAM oocytes. However, oocytes from old SAM (64%, 32/50) showed aberrant MII, with chromosome misalignment and dispersal, in contrast to normal MII in most young SAM oocytes (87%, 65/75), showing chromosome alignment at the metaphase plate of MII spindles. Moreover, Pol-Scope imaging non-invasively detected disrupted or absent visible spindles and possibly aberrant chromosome alignment. CONCLUSIONS Spindle disruption and/or chromosome misalignments at both MI and MII are associated with maternal ageing in the SAM mouse. Our findings also suggest that meiotic division lacks a competent checkpoint for spindle integrity and chromosome alignment during reproductive ageing-associated oocyte senescence.