Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Blockade of IL-23 ameliorates allergic lung inflammation via decreasing the infiltration of Tc17 cells

Introduction Tc17 cells are interleukin (IL)-17-producing CD8+ T cells and have been found to participate in the development of allergic asthma. Interleukin-23 is a cytokine that may be involved in modulating the IL-17 response via Th17 cells. This study aimed to investigate whether IL-23 also has immunomodulatory effects on Tc17 cells. Material and methods An allergic asthmatic mouse model was induced by sensitizing and challenging with ovalbumin (OVA). Anti-IL-23 antibody was administered intratracheally before challenge to the OVA-induced asthmatic mouse model. Airway hyperresponsiveness, lung inflammation, Tc17 cell percentages and IL-17 level in the lung tissue homogenate were measured. Results Anti-IL-23 treatment reduced airway hyperresponsiveness (Rn 2.471 ±0.5077 vs. 4.051 ±0.2334, p < 0.05), inflammatory cell infiltration in bronchoalveolar lavage fluid (eosinophils 140.0 ±9.869 vs. 222.4 ±31.55, p < 0.05, neutrophils 75.93 ±6.745 vs. 127.4 ±19.73, p < 0.05), airway inflammation and mucus secretion. Treatment with anti-IL-23 antibody also markedly reduced IL-17 level (398.1 ±28.74 vs. 590.6 ±36.13, p < 0.01) and percentage of Th17 and Tc17 cells in lung tissue homogenate (4.200 ±0.1581 vs. 9.314 ±1.027, p < 0.01 and 2.852 ±0.2566 vs. 5.588 ±0.3631, p < 0.01, Th17 and Tc17 cells respectively). Conclusions Our data suggest that the IL-23/Tc17 cell axis may be involved in the pathogenesis of asthma as the complement of IL-23/Th17 cells.
Visual pattern recognition using unsupervised spike timing dependent plasticity learning

Neuroscience study shows mammalian brain only use millisecond scale time window to process complicated real-life recognition scenarios. However, such speed cannot be achieved by traditional rate-based spiking neural network (SNN). Compared with spiking rate, the specific spiking timing (also called spiking pattern) may convey much more information. In this paper, by using modified rank order coding scheme, the generated absolute analog features have been encoded into the first spike wave with specific spatiotemporal structural information. An intuitive yet powerful feed-forward spiking neural network framework has been proposed, along with its own unsupervised spike-timing-dependent plasticity (STDP) learning rule with dynamic post-synaptic potential threshold. Compared with other state-of-art spiking algorithms, the proposed method uses biologically plausible STDP learning method to learn the selectivity while the dynamic post-synaptic potential threshold guarantees no training sample will be ignored during the learning procedure. Furthermore, unlike the complicated frameworks used in those state-of-art spiking algorithms, the proposed intuitive spiking neural network is not time-consuming and quite capable of on-line learning. A satisfactory experimental result has been achieved on classic MNIST handwritten character database.
Dynamic Scapular Movement Analysis: Is It Feasible and Reliable in Stroke Patients during Arm Elevation?

Knowledge of three-dimensional scapular movements is essential to understand post-stroke shoulder pain. The goal of the present work is to determine the feasibility and the within and between session reliability of a movement protocol for three-dimensional scapular movement analysis in stroke patients with mild to moderate impairment, using an optoelectronic measurement system. Scapular kinematics of 10 stroke patients and 10 healthy controls was recorded on two occasions during active anteflexion and abduction from 0° to 60° and from 0° to 120°. All tasks were executed unilaterally and bilaterally. The protocol’s feasibility was first assessed, followed by within and between session reliability of scapular total range of motion (ROM), joint angles at start position and of angular waveforms. Additionally, measurement errors were calculated for all parameters. Results indicated that the protocol was generally feasible for this group of patients and assessors. Within session reliability was very good for all tasks. Between sessions, scapular angles at start position were measured reliably for most tasks, while scapular ROM was more reliable during the 120° tasks. In general, scapular angles showed higher reliability during anteflexion compared to abduction, especially for protraction. Scapular lateral rotations resulted in smallest measurement errors. This study indicates that scapular kinematics can be measured reliably and with precision within one measurement session. In case of multiple test sessions, further methodological optimization is required for this protocol to be suitable for clinical decision-making and evaluation of treatment efficacy.
Primary Vaccination with Low Dose Live Dengue 1 Virus Generates a Proinflammatory, Multifunctional T Cell Response in Humans

The four dengue virus serotypes (DENV-1–DENV-4) have a large impact on global health, causing 50–100 million cases of dengue fever annually. Herein, we describe the first kinetic T cell response to a low-dose DENV-1 vaccination study (10 PFU) in humans. Using flow cytometry, we found that proinflammatory cytokines, IFNγ, TNFα, and IL-2, were generated by DENV-1-specific CD4+ cells 21 days post-DENV-1 exposure, and their production continued through the latest time-point, day 42 (p<0.0001 for all cytokines). No statistically significant changes were observed at any time-points for IL-10 (p = 0.19), a regulatory cytokine, indicating that the response to DENV-1 was primarily proinflammatory in nature. We also observed little T cell cross-reactivity to the other 3 DENV serotypes. The percentage of multifunctional T cells (T cells making ≥2 cytokines simultaneously) increased with time post-DENV-1 exposure (p<0.0001). The presence of multifunctional T cells together with neutralizing antibody data suggest that the immune response generated to the vaccine may be protective. This work provides an initial framework for defining primary T cell responses to each DENV serotype and will enhance the evaluation of a tetravalent DENV vaccine.
Micromachined Resonators: A Review

This paper is a review of the remarkable progress that has been made during the past few decades in design, modeling, and fabrication of micromachined resonators. Although micro-resonators have come a long way since their early days of development, they are yet to fulfill the rightful vision of their pervasive use across a wide variety of applications. This is partially due to the complexities associated with the physics that limit their performance, the intricacies involved in the processes that are used in their manufacturing, and the trade-offs in using different transduction mechanisms for their implementation. This work is intended to offer a brief introduction to all such details with references to the most influential contributions in the field for those interested in a deeper understanding of the material.
Application of Autocovariance Least-Squares Methods to Laboratory Data

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the autocovariance least-squares (ALS) techniques to a laboratory reactor for the conversion of acetic anhydride to acetic acid. In this way, it is demonstrated that the methods proposed by Odelson and Rawlings are applicable to actual process data, and not just theoretical simulations. A variety of control scenarios are tested including: simple regulatory control, setpoint changes, input disturbance rejection, output disturbance rejection, and model mismatch rejection. We demonstrate that updating the disturbance parameters while the model is known sufficiently well, has a significant payoff in terms of control performance. However, we further demonstrate that more significant savings in control performance are realized when the ALS methods are applied to model mismatch cases. For example, when an output disturbance model is used to reject an input disturbance, or when the parameter estimation of a nonlinear model is carried out incorrectly. For the sake of completeness, a PID controller is used for comparison purposes. The goal of this project was not to find a superior or novel control strategy for the acetic anhydride reaction, simply to demonstrate the benefits of the ALS methods on an advanced control strategy. However, the control benefits are seen to be far superior to PID control.
New Upper Bounds on Various String Manipulation Problems

In this chapter we deal with various string manipulation problems which originate from the ﬁeld of computational biology and mu-sicology. These problems are: “approximate string matching with gaps”, “inference of maximal pairs in a set of strings” and “handling of weighted sequences”. We provide new upper bounds for solving these problems and for the third we propose a novel data structure, for the representation of the weighted sequences, which inherits most of the properties of the suﬃx tree.
An approach of protein secondary structure prediction based on SVM method in compound pyramid model

Accurate secondary-structure prediction is a key element in the prediction of tertiary structure, in all but the simplest homology modeling cases. After the study on this subject for 30 years and more, there have been some breakthroughs. Based on KDTICM theory, we have proposed a model, which is composed of four layers of the intelligent interface and integrated in several ways, such as SVM, KDD*, homology analysis and so on. Experiment shows that this model obtains Q3 accuracy of 83.06%, 80.49% on RS126 and CB513, and for the proteins which contain more alpha/beta structure, the Q3 accuracy obtained is 93.12%. This article briefly introduces this model and highlights the improved SVM method.
Brain Oxytocin: A Key Regulator of Emotional and Social Behaviours in Both Females and Males

In addition to various reproductive stimuli, the neuropeptide oxytocin (OXT) is released both from the neurohypophysial terminal into the blood stream and within distinct brain regions in response to stressful or social stimuli. Brain OXT receptor‐mediated actions were shown to be significantly involved in the regulation of a variety of behaviours. Here, complementary methodological approaches are discussed which were utilised to reveal, for example, anxiolytic and anti‐stress effects of OXT, both in females and in males, effects that were localised within the central amygdala and the hypothalamic paraventricular nucleus. Also, in male rats, activation of the brain OXT system is essential for the regulation of sexual behaviour, and increased OXT system activity during mating is directly linked to an attenuated anxiety‐related behaviour. Moreover, in late pregnancy and during lactation, central OXT is involved in the establishment and fine‐tuned maintenance of maternal care and maternal aggression. In monogamous prairie voles, brain OXT is important for mating‐induced pair bonding, especially in females. Another example of behavioural actions of intracerebral OXT is the promotion of social memory processes and recognition of con‐specifics, as revealed in rats, mice, sheep and voles. Experimental evidence suggests that, in humans, brain OXT exerts similar behavioural effects. Thus, the brain OXT system seems to be a potential target for the development of therapeutics to treat anxiety‐ and depression‐related diseases or abnormal social behaviours including autism.
Survival and enumeration of the fecal indicators Bifidobacterium adolescentis and Escherichia coli in a tropical rain forest watershed

The density of Bifidobacterium spp. , fecal coliforms, Escherichia coli, and total anaerobic bacteria, acridine orange direct counts, percentages of total bacterial community activity and respiration, and 12 physical and chemical parameters were measured simultaneously at six sites for 12 months in the Mameyes River rain forest watershed, Puerto Rico. The densities of all bacteria were higher than those reported for uncontaminated temperate rivers, even though other water quality parameters would indicate that all uncontaminated sites were oligotrophic. The highest densities for all indicator bacteria were at the site receiving sewage effluent; however, the highest elevation site in the watershed had the next highest densities. Correlations between bacterial densities, nitrates, temperature, phosphates, and total phosphorus indicated that all viable counts were related to nutrient levels, regardless of the site sampled. In situ diffusion chamber studies at two different sites indicated that E. coli could survive, remain physiologically active, and regrow at rates that were dependent on nutrient levels of the ambient waters. Bifidobacterium adolescentis did not survive at either site but did show different rates of decline and physiological activity at the two sites. Bifidobacteria show promise as a better indicator of recent fecal contamination in tropical freshwaters than E. coli or fecal coliforms; however, the YN-6 medium did not prove to be effective for enumeration of bifidobacteria. The coliform maximum contaminant levels for assessing water usability for drinking and recreation appear to be unworkable in tropical freshwaters.
The Design of e-Learning Contracts: Intelligibility Catchers in praxi

Self-organized learning requires both, individualization of content, and social interaction based on relevant learning items. So far few e-learning systems support an integrated didactic and social perspective on learning and knowledge sharing. Intelligbility Catchers (ICs) are e-learning components designed for contracting as part of active learning management. They encapsulate didactic and communication-centered concepts for the collaborative and reflective generation and exchange of knowledge. Intertwining content and communication, mutual context can be kept for learning and exploration of content.
Microscopic model of Purcell enhancement in hyperbolic metamaterials

We study theoretically the dramatic enhancement of spontaneous emission in metamaterials with the hyperbolic dispersion modeled as a cubic lattice of anisotropic resonant dipoles. We analyze the dependence of the Purcell factor on the source position in the lattice unit cell and demonstrate that the optimal emitter positions needed to achieve large Purcell factors and Lamb shifts are in the local field maxima. We show that the calculated Green function has a characteristic crosslike shape, spatially modulated due to the structural discreteness. Our basic microscopic theory provides fundamental insights into the rapidly developing field of hyperbolic metamaterials.
Formalized methodology for data reuse exploration for low-power hierarchical memory mappings

HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access archive for the deposit and dissemination of scientific research documents, whether they are published or not. The documents may come from teaching and research institutions in France or abroad, or from public or private research centers. L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires publics ou privés. Formalized methodology for data reuse exploration for low-power hierarchical memory mappings Sven Wuytack, Jean-Philippe Diguet, Francky Catthoor, Hugo De Man
Para + + : une interface pour l ’ échange de messages

This paper describes a high level C++ library for message passing applications. Our interface is build on top of PVM and MPI. The goal of this interface is to allow a quicker design of parallel applications without any important drop of performances. We introduce two levels of tasks and use C++ streams for communications. We also present a performance study over both PVM and MPI to show the overhead of our implementation. Finally, we detail two applications based on the heat equation to explain how our library can be used for SPMD and MPMD applications. Résumé : Ce papier décrit une interface C++ de haut niveau pour la programmation paréchange de messages. Cette interface est implantée au dessus de PVM et MPI. L'idée de cette interface est de permettre le développement rapide d'applicationsparalì eles sans introduire de chute de performances notable. Nous définissons une hiérarchiè a deux niveaux entre tâches et utilisons le mécanisme de " stream " C++ pour les communications. Nous présentons aussi ici uné etude de performances au dessus des deux implantations PVM et MPI pour mesurer le surcoût introduit par Para++. Enfin, nous détaillons deux applications basées sur la résolution de l'´ equation de la cha-leur pour expliquer concrètement comment notre bibliothèque C++ peutêtre utiliséè a la fois dans le cadre d'application SPMD et MPMD.
Potential Role of Cyr61 Induced Degeneration of Human Müller Cells in Diabetic Retinopathy

The degeneration of Müller cells has been recognized to involve in the pathogenesis of diabetic retinopathy. However, the mechanism is not yet clear. This study is to explore the potential role of Cyr61, a secreted signaling protein in extracellular matrix, in inducing human Müller cell degeneration in diabetic retinopathy (DR). Twenty patients with proliferative diabetic retinopathy (PDR) and twelve non-diabetic patients were recruited for this study. Vitreous fluid was collected during vitrectomy surgery for Cyr61 ELISA. Human Müller cell line MIO-M1 were cultured to be subconfluent, and then treated with glucose (0–20 mM) or Cyr61 (0–300 ng/ml). Cyr61 expression induced by increasing concentrations of glucose was evaluated by RT-qPCR and Western blot. Effects of Cyr61 on Müller cells viability, migration and apoptosis were observed by MTT assay, Transwell assay, and TUNEL assay. Vitreous Cyr61 levels were observed to be 8-fold higher in patients with PDR (3576.92±1574.58 pg/mL), compared with non-diabetic controls (436.14±130.69 pg/mL). Interestingly, the active PDR group was significantly higher than the quiescent PDR group (P<0.01). In retinal Müller cells culture, high glucose significantly and dose-dependently elevated Cyr61 expression at both mRNA and protein levels. Cyr61 at high concentrations dose-dependently inhibited the viability and migration of Müller cells. TUNEL assay further revealed that high concentration of Cyr61 significantly promoted the cell apoptosis. In conclusion, these findings demonstrated for the first time that the expression of Cyr61 was elevated by high glucose in Müller cells, and Cyr61 inhibited cell viability and migration while induced apoptosis, suggesting the potential role of Cyr61 in Müller cell degeneration. The elevated Cyr61 levels in vitreous fluid of PDR patients further support its role in diabetic retinopathy (DR).
Mouse disabled (mDab1): a Src binding protein implicated in neuronal development

Here, we identify a mouse homolog of the Drosophila Disabled (Dab) protein, mDab1, and show it is an adaptor molecule functioning in neural development. We find that mDab1 is expressed in certain neuronal and hematopoietic cell lines, and is localized to the growing nerves of embryonic mice. During mouse embryogenesis, mDab1 is tyrosine phosphorylated when the nervous system is undergoing dramatic expansion. However, when nerve tracts are established, mDab1 lacks detectable phosphotyrosine. Tyrosine‐phosphorylated mDab1 associates with the SH2 domains of Src, Fyn and Abl. An interaction between mDab1 and Src is observed when P19 embryonal carcinoma (EC) cells undergo differentiation into neuronal cell types. mDab1 can also form complexes with cellular phosphotyrosyl proteins through a domain that is related to the phosphotyrosine binding (PTB) domains of the Shc family of adaptor proteins. The mDab1 PTB domain binds to phosphotyrosine‐containing proteins of 200, 120 and 40 kDa from extracts of embryonic mouse heads. The properties of mDab1 and genetic analysis of Dab in Drosophila suggest that these molecules function in key signal transduction pathways involved in the formation of neural networks.
Prevalence of FOXP3+ Regulatory T Cells Increases During the Progression of Pancreatic Ductal Adenocarcinoma and Its Premalignant Lesions

Purpose: Antitumor immune response changes drastically during the progression of cancers. Established cancers often escape from the host immune system, although specific immune surveillance operates in the early stages of tumorigenesis in murine models. CD4+CD25+ regulatory T cells (TR) play a central role in self-tolerance and suppress effective antitumor immune responses. The aim of this study was to investigate the clinical significance and roles of TR in the progression and multistep carcinogenesis of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma. Experimental Design: We raised anti-FOXP3 antibodies and used them in immunohistochemical studies of the prevalence of FOXP3+CD4+CD25+ TR in the CD4+ T cells, which infiltrated in tissue and draining lymph nodes of 198 pancreatic ductal adenocarcinomas, their premalignant lesions (84 lesions of pancreatic intraepithelial neoplasias and 51 intraductal papillary-mucinous neoplasms), and 15 nonneoplastic pancreatic lesions. Results: The prevalence of TR was significantly increased in the ductal adenocarcinomas compared with that in the stroma of nonneoplastic inflammation (P < 0.0001). The increased prevalence of TR was significantly correlated with certain clinicopathologic factors. A better prognosis was observed in patients with a low prevalence of TR, and this was independent of other survival factors (P < 0.0001). Infiltration of intraepithelial CD8+TIA-1+ cytotoxic T cells in pancreatic ducts was marked in low-grade premalignant lesions but diminished during the progression of both pancreatic intraepithelial neoplasias and intraductal papillary-mucinous neoplasms. Conversely, the prevalence of TR increased significantly during the progression of premalignant lesions. Conclusions: TR play a role in controlling the immune response against pancreatic ductal carcinoma from the premalignant stage to established cancer. In pancreatic ductal carcinoma, a high prevalence of TR seems to be a marker of poor prognosis.
Human Iris Segmentation for Iris Recognition in Unconstrained Environments

This paper presents a human iris recognition system in unconstrained environments in which an effective method is proposed for localization of iris inner and outer boundaries. In this method, after pre-processing stage, circular Hough transform was utilized for localizing circular area of iris inner and outer boundaries. Also, through applying linear Hough transform, localization of boundaries between upper and lower eyelids occluding iris has been performed. In comparison with available iris segmentation methods, not only has the proposed method a relatively higher precision, but also compares with popular available methods in terms of processing time. Experimental results on images available in CASIA database show that the proposed method has an accuracy rate of 97.50%.
Detecting Abandoned Objects With a Moving Camera

This paper presents a novel framework for detecting nonflat abandoned objects by matching a reference and a target video sequences. The reference video is taken by a moving camera when there is no suspicious object in the scene. The target video is taken by a camera following the same route and may contain extra objects. The objective is to find these objects. GPS information is used to roughly align the two videos and find the corresponding frame pairs. Based upon the GPS alignment, four simple but effective ideas are proposed to achieve the objective: an intersequence geometric alignment based upon homographies, which is computed by a modified RANSAC, to find all possible suspicious areas, an intrasequence geometric alignment to remove false alarms caused by high objects, a local appearance comparison between two aligned intrasequence frames to remove false alarms in flat areas, and a temporal filtering step to confirm the existence of suspicious objects. Experiments on fifteen pairs of videos show the promise of the proposed method.