Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Crosstalk between tongue carcinoma cells, extracellular vesicles, and immune cells in in vitro and in vivo models

The crosstalk between immune cells, cancer cells, and extracellular vesicles (EVs) secreted by cancer cells remains poorly understood. We created three-dimensional (3D) cell culture models using human leiomyoma discs and Myogel to study the effects of immune cells on highly (HSC-3) and less (SCC-25) invasive oral tongue squamous cell carcinoma (OTSCC) cell lines. Additionally, we studied the effects of EVs isolated from these cell lines on the cytotoxicity of CD8+ T and NK cells isolated from three healthy donors. Our analysis included the effects of these EVs on innate immunity in zebrafish larvae. Activated immune cells significantly decreased the proliferation of both OTSCC cell lines and associated with a diminished invasion area of HSC-3 cells. In general, EVs from SCC-25 increased the cytotoxic activity of CD8+ T and NK cells more than those from HSC-3 cells. However, this effect varied depending on the source and the immune and cancer cell subgroups. In zebrafish, the amount of IL-13 mRNA was decreased by SCC-25 EVs. This study describes promising in vitro and in vivo models to investigate interactions between immune cells, cancer cells, and EVs.
EZH2 Modulates the DNA Methylome and Controls T Cell Adhesion Through Junctional Adhesion Molecule A in Lupus Patients

EZH2 is an epigenetic regulator that mediates H3K27 trimethylation (H3K27me3) and modulates DNA methylation. The aim of this study was to characterize the role of EZH2 in CD4+ T cells in the pathogenesis of systemic lupus erythematosus.
Comparative Taphonomy of Mollusk Assemblages in Quaternary Freshwater Sequences from the Salado River Basin, Buenos Aires

Abstract. From the analysis of the taphonomic attributes of the specimens of Heleobia parchappii found in fluvial and paleolacustrine sequences of the lower basin of the Salado River, the surface alteration of their shells was comparatively studied in order to assess the differences between both environments. The main results that were obtained by means of Non-Metric Multidimensional Scaling (NMDS) and analysis of similarity (ANOSIM) tests (R=0.31, p<0.01) enabled the recognition and statistical differentiation of both groups of samples. The taphonomic characteristics presented by those that were recovered from the paleolacustrine environment are more similar to each other, whereas those from the fluvial environment showed greater dispersion. Through the similarity percentage (SIMPER) analysis we could determine that the variables of discoloration and dissolution were the most important features to differentiate both groups, and that the values of the indexes (Total Taphonomic Grades) were always higher in the paleolacustrine assemblages, thus showing greater decay. The differences of preservation could be explained by the residence time of the remains near the water-sediment interface as well as by the differences in the sedimentation rate in both environments, which control the different exposure cycles of the shells. These differences would be related to changes in the hydrological regime (fluctuations in surface and groundwater levels) that, although affecting the entire study area, are more intense and frequent in shallow lakes, therefore favoring the decay of the shells accumulated in this environment.
A Semi-Markov Decision Process (SMDP) for Active State Control of A Heterogeneous Network

Due to growing demand on wireless data traffic, a large number of different types of base stations (BSs) have been installed. However, space-time dependent wireless data traffic densities can result in a significant number of idle BSs, which implies the waste of power resources. To deal with this problem, we propose an active state control algorithm based on semi-Markov decision process (SMDP) for a heterogeneous network. A MDP in discrete time domain is formulated from continuous domain with some approximation. Suboptimal on-line learning algorithm with a random policy is proposed to solve the problem. We explicitly include coverage constraint so that active cells can provide the same signal to noise ratio (SNR) coverage with a targeted outage rate. Simulation results verify that the proposed algorithm properly controls the active state depending on traffic densities without increasing the number of handovers excessively while providing average user perceived rate (UPR) in a more power efficient way than a conventional algorithm.
Reflex and mechanical contributions to head stabilization in alert cats.

Five alert cats were tested for their responses to rotation in a device that allowed rotation of the head on the trunk about a vertical axis passing through the C1-C2 vertebral joint. Electrodes were implanted to record the horizontal and vertical electrooculogram and electromyographic (EMG) activity of the dorsal neck muscles splenius, biventer cervicus, and complexus. Head rotation and torque acting on the head were recorded in the horizontal plane during rotations in the 0.05-5.0 Hz frequency range. Responses were interpreted with reference to a closed-loop dynamic model of the head-neck system. Whole-body rotation (WBR) with no neck movement elicited a vestibulocollic reflex (VCR). Neck muscle EMG lagged the sinusoidal platform rotation by approximately 120 degrees at low frequencies, which represents a 60 degrees lead relative to a perfectly compensatory 180 degrees lag. This phase lead was related to the cumulative eye position of the accompanying horizontal vestibular nystagmus as reported by Vidal et al. Horizontal head torque exhibited a similar low-frequency behavior. At high frequencies, EMG exhibited a progressively increasing phase lead and gain increase typical of a second-order lead system as described in decerebrate cats. Torque, however, showed much less lead and gain increase, presumably because of the low-pass filter properties of the process coupling muscle excitation to torque. Head torque did exhibit a steep increase in gain with frequency and a phase approaching that of platform acceleration at high frequencies when weights were attached to the head to increase its moment of inertia. The same +40 dB/decade gain slope and phase approaching 0 degree was observed during WBR rotation of the anesthetized cat in which head inertia is the only factor contributing to the torque. This dynamic behavior was predicted by the inertial component of the model. In the alert unweighted cat, the inertial torque was smaller than VCR-generated torque at frequencies below 4 Hz. Rotation of the neck with the head held fixed in space (HFS rotation) elicited a cervicocollic reflex (CCR). Neck EMG response was very similar to that observed during WBR, both in dynamic behavior and overall gain. Torque, however, was consistently greater than that generated by WBR and showed a steady increase of 8 dB/decade as frequency rose. The added torque can be attributed to the viscoelastic properties of neck muscles. Driven rotation of the head on the fixed body elicited torques that could be closely approximated by a vector sum of torques observed during WBR and HFS rotations. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)
Organic production of native potato landrace “pintaboca” (Solanum stenotomum Juz. & Bukasov) in Bolivia: experimenting planting times and cultivation strategies

In the municipality of Colomi, in the highlands of Bolivia, market pressure leads small scale farmers to substitute their native landraces with commercial potato varieties. Organic cultivation might offer a channel for selling native potatoes to an emerging industry of coloured native potato crisps. Nevertheless, as the area is endemic for late blight (Phytophthora infestans), adequate cultivation practices that allow organic production must be defined. The present experiment compared four cultivation strategies (two organic, which included the use of beneficial microoorganisms applied in the soil and through foliar spray, one conventional, which included cymoxanil and mancozeb based fungicides and a control with the same soil treatment as the organic strategies but no foliar spray) and two planting dates (early and main season planting) on a native potato landrace locally known as ‘pintabocaʼ (Solanum stenotomum). Our results showed that early planting resulted in significantly higher yields, although the area under disease progress curve (AUDPC) of late blight did not differ significantly between planting dates. The lower yields in the plot planted during the main season were mainly due to the combined incidence of early and late blight. There was no significant difference in yields and quality of the tubers cultivated with conventional, organic or control treatment, with the exception that the largest tuber size category was produced only in the conventional treatment. We conclude that farmers in Colomi who want to shift to organic cultivation of the landrace ʻpintabocaʼ at altitudes around 3,300 m a.s. l. could benefit from practicing early planting, although additional trials covering several seasons are needed to confirm our results.
Mathematical modelling of extracellular matrix dynamics using discrete cells: fiber orientation and tissue regeneration.

Matrix orientation plays a crucial role in determining the severity of scar tissue after dermal wounding. We present a model framework which allows us to examine the interaction of many of the factors involved in orientation and alignment. Within this framework, cells are considered as discrete objects, while the matrix is modelled as a continuum. Using numerical simulations, we investigate the effect on alignment of changing cell properties and of varying cell interactions with collagen and fibrin.
Acetylcholine-producing NK cells attenuate CNS inflammation via modulation of infiltrating monocytes/macrophages

Significance Acetylcholine (ACh) produced by neurons performs an array of functions that control cardiac, gastrointestinal, and other biosystems. Here we discovered that lymphocytic natural killer (NK) cells bear machinery that produces ACh. The activity of ACh-producing NK cells up-regulates during the disease flare of multiple sclerosis (MS) and may, therefore, reflect the pathologic state. In the mouse model of MS, experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis, these ACh-producing NK cells can reduce the intensity of inflammation and autoimmune responses in the brain and spinal cord. Therefore, the nonneural cholinergic system, as reflected by ACh-producing NK cells, appeared to counteract aberrant immune responses and lessen brain damage. This observation offers insight into the therapeutic mechanisms of the Food and Drug Administration-approved drug daclizumab high-yield process for MS. The nonneural cholinergic system of immune cells is pivotal for the maintenance of immunological homeostasis. Here we demonstrate the expression of choline acetyltransferase (ChAT) and cholinergic enzymes in murine natural killer (NK) cells. The capacity for acetylcholine synthesis by NK cells increased markedly under inflammatory conditions such as experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE), in which ChAT expression escalated along with the maturation of NK cells. ChAT+ and ChAT− NK cells displayed distinctive features in terms of cytotoxicity and chemokine/cytokine production. Transfer of ChAT+ NK cells into the cerebral ventricles of CX3CR1−/− mice reduced brain and spinal cord damage after EAE induction, and decreased the numbers of CNS-infiltrating CCR2+Ly6Chi monocytes. ChAT+ NK cells killed CCR2+Ly6Chi monocytes directly via the disruption of tolerance and inhibited the production of proinflammatory cytokines. Interestingly, ChAT+ NK cells and CCR2+Ly6Chi monocytes formed immune synapses; moreover, the impact of ChAT+ NK cells was mediated by α7-nicotinic acetylcholine receptors. Finally, the NK cell cholinergic system up-regulated in response to autoimmune activation in multiple sclerosis, perhaps reflecting the severity of disease. Therefore, this study extends our understanding of the nonneural cholinergic system and the protective immune effect of acetylcholine-producing NK cells in autoimmune diseases.
Bicoherence analysis of new cardiovascular spectral components observed in heart-transplant patients: statistical approach for bicoherence thresholding

Following heart transplant (HT), the patient's heart functions under complete cardiac denervation. As a result, the variability in physiologic signals is extremely reduced. We have previously reported that in addition to the typical spectral components (of very low amplitude), part of the HT patients (above 50%) demonstrated unexpected additional peaks in their heart rate and blood pressure spectra. These peaks may be a result of the development of compensatory mechanism induced by loss of parasympathetic control, or of increased importance of nonlinear control interactions. It is important to quantify these strange, unexpected very-high frequency (VHF) peaks, to understand their origin and their contribution to cardiac control in transplant patients. In this paper, we chose to examine these VHF peaks by applying the bicoherence approach. The reduced signal to noise ratio, occurring in these patients, results, however, in an extremely noisy bicoherence. We, therefore, developed several statistical tools in order to distinguish between "true" bicoherence peaks (reflecting true phase coupling) and spurious peaks. The outcome of these methods was an efficient and sensitive bicoherence thresholding procedure, able to identify most of the spurious peaks. Applying these tools to the bicoherence of cardiovascular signals which display VHF peaks, revealed several significant bicoherence peaks. Interestingly, these peaks consisted of two different types. The first type of VHF peaks simply reflects nonlinear cardiac-respiratory coupling, imposed by nonsinusoidal breathing. The second type, however, is clearly not induced by the respiratory system. We believe that these type-2 VHF peaks reflect the evolution of a new, yet unexplained, compensatory mechanism.
ROLE OF HABITAT MANAGEMENT TECHNOLOGIES IN THE CONTROL OF CEREAL STEM AND COB BORERS IN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA

Increasing social and government awareness of ecosystem services has facilitated a significant increase in conservation biological control (CBC) research in Australasia. Coupled with the recent development of new methods and theoretical insights, this is an exciting period for the discipline of CBC. Increasingly, this branch of arthropod biocontrol is taking a rigorous, directed approach, ‘ecological engineering’, rather than relying on a crude approximation that diversifying vegetation in a ‘shotgun’ manner will tend to reduce pest numbers. Funding agencies are supporting such work in several agricultural systems. Industry too has become an important supporter of such work, especially in New Zealand. This paper will review conservation biological control work in Australasia to illustrate the ecological engineering approach and prospects for wider adoption of conservation biological control.
Information Filtering, Novelty Detection, and Named-Page Finding

In TREC 11, our group participated in the Novelty track, Filtering track, and the Named-Page Finding task of the Web track. This paper describes our approaches, experiments, and results. As the approach for each task is quite different, the paper contains a section for each of the tasks. The following section describes our experiments in adaptive filtering, Section 3 describes named-page finding, and section 4 discusses the Novelty track.
Nociceptive primary afferents: they have a mind of their own

Nociceptive primary afferents have three surprising properties: they are highly complex in their expression of neurotransmitters and receptors and most probably participate in autocrine and paracrine interactions; they are capable of exerting tonic and activity‐dependent inhibitory control over incoming nociceptive input; they can generate signals in the form of dorsal root reflexes that are transmitted antidromically out to the periphery and these signals can result in neurogenic inflammation in the innervated tissue. Thus, nociceptive primary afferents are highly complicated structures, capable of modifying input before it is ever transmitted to the central nervous system and capable of altering the tissue they innervate.
Status of Mangrove Research and Management in the Philippines: Challenges and Opportunities

The documented history of research and other studies on mangroves in the Philippines date back to the 17th century (1600–1699). This was mentioned in a book entitled, “Libro de medicinas de esta tierra y declaraciones de las virtudes de los árboles y plantas están en estas Filipinas” (“Book of medicines of this land and declarations of the virtues of trees and plants of the Philippine Islands”; De Mercado 1665–1698 cited by Zamora 1983). Historical research has enhanced the understanding of past human influences on mangroves and has provided insights that can improve current conservation and management efforts. This study presents one of the most comprehensive studies on mangroves in the Philippines. Historical changes in the country’s mangroves and their use were examined in 875 published accounts for 1698–2014, a period of 316 years.
Multiple-average-voice-based speech synthesis

This paper describes a novel approach for the speaker adaptation of statistical parametric speech synthesis systems based on the interpolation of a set of average voice models (AVM). Recent results have shown that the quality/naturalness of adapted voices depends on the distance from the average voice model used for speaker adaptation. This suggests the use of several AVMs trained on carefully chosen speaker clusters from which a more suitable AVM can be selected/interpolated during the adaptation. In the proposed approach a set of AVMs, a multiple-AVM, is trained on distinct clusters of speakers which are iteratively re-assigned during the estimation process initialised according to metadata. During adaptation, each AVM from the multiple-AVM is first adapted towards the target speaker. The adapted means from the AVMs are then interpolated to yield the final speaker adapted mean for synthesis. It is shown, performing speaker adaptation on a corpus of British speakers with various regional accents, that the quality/naturalness of synthetic speech of adapted voices is significantly higher than when considering a single factor-independent AVM selected according to the target speaker characteristics.
Translation on demand by a simple RNA-based thermosensor

Structured RNA regions are important gene control elements in prokaryotes and eukaryotes. Here, we show that the mRNA of a cyanobacterial heat shock gene contains a built-in thermosensor critical for photosynthetic activity under stress conditions. The exceptionally short 5′-untranslated region is comprised of a single hairpin with an internal asymmetric loop. It inhibits translation of the Synechocystis hsp17 transcript at normal growth conditions, permits translation initiation under stress conditions and shuts down Hsp17 production in the recovery phase. Point mutations that stabilized or destabilized the RNA structure deregulated reporter gene expression in vivo and ribosome binding in vitro. Introduction of such point mutations into the Synechocystis genome produced severe phenotypic defects. Reversible formation of the open and closed structure was beneficial for viability, integrity of the photosystem and oxygen evolution. Continuous production of Hsp17 was detrimental when the stress declined indicating that shutting-off heat shock protein production is an important, previously unrecognized function of RNA thermometers. We discovered a simple biosensor that strictly adjusts the cellular level of a molecular chaperone to the physiological need.
Exploring Continuous Participation On Entertainment Applications Of Social Network Sites

Researchers have been increasingly interested in examining the effect of social network site based entertainment applications (SNSEA) in retaining while expanding user base for the websites. This paper therefore proposed a research model that investigates how the different types of information embedded on SNSEA affect such continuous participation according to elaboration-likelihood model. The empirical study shows that (1) symbolic physicality reflects the content information of SNSEA, highlighting the cognitive belief (i.e., perceived curiosity) that users can obtain from SNSEA; (2) inherent sociability captures the circumstance or environment cue information of SNSEA, highlighting the affective reaction (i.e., perceived enjoyment); (3) perceived enjoyment, which is significantly related to perceived curiosity of SNSEA, is the significant antecedent of user’s continuous participation. In terms of practical implication, our study provides significant indications on how to design and manage SNSEA in an effort to increase user base.
Avalanches in Fractional Cascading

This paper studies the distribution of avalanches in fractional cascading, linking the behavior to studies on self-organized criticality, in particular, the power law behavior of the Bak-Tang-Wiesenfeld sandpile model. Unlike the sandpile model, however, we prove that fractional cascading does not exhibit abelian properties. While fractional cascading has maximum gap size as a system parameter that can be used to tune the system behavior, it does not need very fine tuning for the system to display behavior characteristic of self-organized criticality.
Learned parametrized dynamic movement primitives with shared synergies for controlling robotic and musculoskeletal systems

A salient feature of human motor skill learning is the ability to exploit similarities across related tasks. In biological motor control, it has been hypothesized that muscle synergies, coherent activations of groups of muscles, allow for exploiting shared knowledge. Recent studies have shown that a rich set of complex motor skills can be generated by a combination of a small number of muscle synergies. In robotics, dynamic movement primitives are commonly used for motor skill learning. This machine learning approach implements a stable attractor system that facilitates learning and it can be used in high-dimensional continuous spaces. However, it does not allow for reusing shared knowledge, i.e., for each task an individual set of parameters has to be learned. We propose a novel movement primitive representation that employs parametrized basis functions, which combines the benefits of muscle synergies and dynamic movement primitives. For each task a superposition of synergies modulates a stable attractor system. This approach leads to a compact representation of multiple motor skills and at the same time enables efficient learning in high-dimensional continuous systems. The movement representation supports discrete and rhythmic movements and in particular includes the dynamic movement primitive approach as a special case. We demonstrate the feasibility of the movement representation in three multi-task learning simulated scenarios. First, the characteristics of the proposed representation are illustrated in a point-mass task. Second, in complex humanoid walking experiments, multiple walking patterns with different step heights are learned robustly and efficiently. Finally, in a multi-directional reaching task simulated with a musculoskeletal model of the human arm, we show how the proposed movement primitives can be used to learn appropriate muscle excitation patterns and to generalize effectively to new reaching skills.