Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effect of static magnetic fields on the growth, photosynthesis and ultrastructure of Chlorella kessleri microalgae

Microalgal biotechnology could generate substantial amounts of biofuels with minimal environmental impact if the economics can be improved by increasing the rate of biomass production. Chlorella kessleri was grown in a small‐scale raceway pond and in flask cultures with the entire volume, 1% (v/v) at any instant, periodically exposed to static magnetic fields to demonstrate increased biomass production and investigate physiological changes, respectively. The growth rate in flasks was maximal at a field strength of 10 mT, increasing from 0.39 ± 0.06 per day for the control to 0.88 ± 0.06 per day. In the raceway pond the 10 mT field increased the growth rate from 0.24 ± 0.03 to 0.45 ± 0.05 per day, final biomass from 0.88 ± 0.11 to 1.56 ± 0.18 g/L per day, and maximum biomass production from 0.11 ± 0.02 to 0.38 ± 0.04 g/L per day. Increased pigment, protein, Ca, and Zn content made the biomass produced with magnetic stimulation nutritionally superior. An increase in oxidative stress was measured indirectly as a decrease in antioxidant capacity from 26 ± 2 to 17 ± 1 µmol antioxidant/g biomass. Net photosynthetic capacity (NPC) and respiratory rate were increased by factors of 2.1 and 3.1, respectively. Loss of NPC enhancement after the removal of magnetic field fit a first‐order model well (R2 = 0.99) with a half‐life of 3.3 days. Transmission electron microscopy showed enlarged chloroplasts and decreased thylakoid order with 10 mT treatment. By increasing daily biomass production about fourfold, 10 mT magnetic field exposure could make algal oil cost competitive with other biodiesel feedstocks. Bioelectromagnetics 33:298–308, 2012. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Enterovirus 2Apro Targets MDA5 and MAVS in Infected Cells

ABSTRACT RIG-I-like receptors (RLRs) MDA5 and RIG-I are key players in the innate antiviral response. Upon recognition of viral RNA, they interact with MAVS, eventually inducing type I interferon production. The interferon induction pathway is commonly targeted by viruses. How enteroviruses suppress interferon production is incompletely understood. MDA5 has been suggested to undergo caspase- and proteasome-mediated degradation during poliovirus infection. Additionally, MAVS is reported to be cleaved during infection with coxsackievirus B3 (CVB3) by the CVB3 proteinase 3Cpro, whereas MAVS cleavage by enterovirus 71 has been attributed to 2Apro. As yet, a detailed examination of the RLR pathway as a whole during any enterovirus infection is lacking. We performed a comprehensive analysis of crucial factors of the RLR pathway, including MDA5, RIG-I, LGP2, MAVS, TBK1, and IRF3, during infection of CVB3, a human enterovirus B (HEV-B) species member. We show that CVB3 inhibits the RLR pathway upstream of TBK1 activation, as demonstrated by limited phosphorylation of TBK1 and a lack of IRF3 phosphorylation. Furthermore, we show that MDA5, MAVS, and RIG-I all undergo proteolytic degradation in CVB3-infected cells through a caspase- and proteasome-independent manner. We convincingly show that MDA5 and MAVS cleavages are both mediated by CVB3 2Apro, while RIG-I is cleaved by 3Cpro. Moreover, we show that proteinases 2Apro and 3Cpro of poliovirus (HEV-C) and enterovirus 71 (HEV-A) exert the same functions. This study identifies a critical role of 2Apro by cleaving MDA5 and MAVS and shows that enteroviruses use a common strategy to counteract the interferon response in infected cells. IMPORTANCE Human enteroviruses (HEVs) are important pathogens that cause a variety of diseases in humans, including poliomyelitis, hand, foot, and mouth disease, viral meningitis, cardiomyopathy, and more. Like many other viruses, enteroviruses target the host immune pathways to gain replication advantage. The MDA5/MAVS pathway is responsible for recognizing enterovirus infections in the host cell and leads to expression of type I interferons (IFN-I), crucial antiviral signaling molecules. Here we show that three species of HEVs all employ the viral proteinase 2A (2Apro) to proteolytically target MDA5 and MAVS, leading to an efficient blockade upstream of IFN-I transcription. These observations suggest that MDA5/MAVS antagonization is an evolutionarily conserved and beneficial mechanism of enteroviruses. Understanding the molecular mechanisms of enterovirus immune evasion strategies will help to develop countermeasures to control infections with these viruses in the future.
Designing an Experiment to Investigate Subpixel Mapping as an Alternative Method to Obtain Land Use/Land Cover Maps

Various subpixel mapping (SPM) methods have been proposed as downscaling techniques to reduce uncertainty in classifying mixed pixels. Such methods can provide category maps of a higher spatial resolution than the original input images. The aim of this study was to explore and validate the potential of SPM as an alternative method for obtaining land use/land cover (LULC) maps of regions where high-spatial-resolution LULC maps are unavailable. An experimental design was proposed to evaluate the feasibility of SPM for providing the alternative LULC maps. A case study was implemented in the Jingjinji region of China. SPM results for spatial resolutions of 500–100 m were derived from a single 1-km synthetic fraction image using two representative SPM methods. The 1-km synthetic fraction image was assumed to be error free. Accuracy assessment and analysis showed that overall accuracies of the SPM results were reduced from about 85% to 75% with increasing spatial resolution, and that producer’s accuracies varied considerably from about 62% to 93%. SPM performed best when handling areal features in comparison with linear and point features. The highest accuracies were achieved for areas with the lowest complexity. The study concluded that the results from SPM could provide an alternative LULC data source with acceptable accuracy, especially in areas with low complexity and with a large proportion of areal features.
SHAPE OPTIMIZATION OF SHAFTS UNDER TORSION USING GENETIC ALGORITHMS AND BOUNDARY ELEMENTS

This paper discusses shape optimization problems for elastic shafts under torsion using genetic algorithms (GA) coupled to the boundary element method (BEM). A GA is proposed to evolve the shape optimization involving the objective function that minimizes the area of the cross-section where the constraint imposed is a minimum value of torsional stiffness. The design variables of the problem are coordinates of the nodes used to define the boundary element discretization of the cross section. These values are generated by the GA and handled by a mesh generator which defines a candidate solution to the problem. The value of the torsional stiffness for each individual is evaluated using an implementation of the direct boundary element method. For a given pair of values of cross-sectional area and torsional stiffness, the value of the fitness function of an individual is obtained. In this case the constrained optimization problem is replaced by an unconstrained one by means of a penalty function. In order to investigate the robustness of the proposed scheme, an optimization problem were tackled. The binary-coded generational GA uses a Gray code, rank-based selection, and elitism. Standard one-point, two-point, and uniform crossover as well a mutation operator were applied.
A RATIONAL APPROACH TO THE DEVELOPMENT OF ANTIVIRAL CHEMOTHERAPY: ALTERNATIVE SUBSTRATES OF HERPES SIMPLEX VIRUS TYPE 1 (HSV‐1) AND TYPE 2 (HSV‐2) THYMIDINE KINASE (TK) *

Herpesviruses are responsible for many disease entities in man and recent evidence suggests a strong correlation between herpes infections and the incidence of certain human malignancies. ' A specific agent capable of inhibiting the replication of this organism might be useful in the treatment of herpes infectious diseases and also, possibly, malignancies associated with herpesviruses. One way of developing such an agent is to utilize someof the unique properties of virus-induced enzymes that are not shared by the corresponding enzyme in noninfected tissue. This approach has been taken in our laboratory and the basis for the strategy we have used is described in FIGURE 1. Deoxythymidine kinase (TK) catalyzes the phosphorylation of deoxythymidine (dThd) to dTMP. This enzyme does not appear to be essential for virus growth or cell proliferation in ~ u l t u r e . ~ ~ ~ In human cells there a re two major types of TK: one is present in cytoplasm and another in mitochondria. When these cells are infected with herpesvirus, a new species of T K is synthesized that is virus specific. This virusspecific TK, has also been found in certain cells transformed by v i ~ u s e s . ~ Studies on the properties of human and virus-induced TKs have been carried out in many laboratories using either crude or partially purified enzyme preparations, and seem to indicate that the specificity of the binding site for dThd in virus TK is different from that of human TK.5*B These results suggest that it may be possible to find an analog of dThd (designated as 5-X-dUrd in FIGURE 1) that could act as an alternative substrate of dThd for virus TK but not for human TKs. Phosphorylation of such an analog to 5-X-dUMP in cells containing virus TK would be followed either by retention of the monophosphate in the cell or phosphorylation to 5-X-dUDP and 5-XdUTP, depending on the specificity of dTMP kinase and NDP kinases involved. These phosphorylated derivatives may exert inhibitory effects on either dThd metabolism or DNA synthesis. Uninfected cells would not be able to phosphorylate 5-X-dUrd, and thus these cells should not be adversely effected. This presentation describes the studies that we have undertaken to test this hypothesis. Human mitochondria1 and cytoplasmic TK as well as herpes simplex virus Type 1
Mobile GPU accelerated digital predistortion on a software-defined mobile transmitter

We present the design exploration and the performance evaluation of a mobile transmitter digital predistortion (DPD) module on a mobile GPU. Digital predistortion is a widely used technique for suppressing the spurious spectrum emission caused by the imperfection of power amplifier and radio frequency (RF) circuits in a real wireless transmitter. Considering the parallel architecture, numerous computing cores and programmability of GPU, in this work, a DPD design based on augmented parallel Hammerstein structure is implemented on a mobile GPU integrated in an Nvidia Jetson TK1 mobile development board, targeting at a mobile transmitter. The algorithm level and data level parallelism are carefully explored for efficient mapping of the DPD algorithm and full utilization of the mobile GPU resources. We analyze the throughput and timing performance of our implementation and verify the functionality of DPD experimentally on a novel software-defined mobile terminal. The results show that our proposed mobile GPU driven digital predistortion design not only achieves real-time high performance, but also offers programmability and reconfigurability for design upgrading and extension.
Efficacy and antivascular effects of EphA2 reduction with an agonistic antibody in ovarian cancer.

BACKGROUND EphA2 is an oncoprotein and tyrosine kinase receptor that is overexpressed in ovarian and many other cancers. We investigated the effects of reduced EphA2 levels on tumor growth and the tumor microenvironment in an orthotopic ovarian cancer model. METHODS The effect of the EphA2-agonistic monoclonal antibody EA5, alone or in combination with paclitaxel, on the growth of ovarian cancer cells (SKOV3ip1, HeyA8, and HeyA8MDR [taxane-platinum resistant]) was determined in vitro and in vivo by immunoblotting, 3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2,5-diphenyl tetrazolium bromide assay, and immunohistochemical analysis. Expression of EphA2 and markers of angiogenesis (CD31, vascular endothelial growth factor [VEGF], and basic fibroblast growth factor), proliferation (proliferating cell nuclear antigen), and endothelial cell apoptosis (CD31-terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase biotin-deoxyuridine triphosphate nick-end labeling colocalization) and phosphorylation of Src were analyzed by immunoblotting, immunohistochemistry, immunofluorescence, and in situ hybridization in tumors from treated mice. Statistical tests were two-sided. RESULTS EA5 antibody treatment led to a more than 90% reduction in EphA2 expression in HeyA8 tumors in vivo. In mice bearing orthotopic SKOV3ip1 or HeyA8 tumors, 4 weeks of EA5 treatment resulted in tumors that weighed 31% and 45% less, respectively, than those in control (IgG-treated) mice (95% confidence interval [CI] = -0.09% to 71% and 20% to 70%, P = .27 and .01, respectively). Combination therapy with EA5 and paclitaxel reduced tumor weight by 77% and 80% (95% CI = 63% to 91% and 68% to 91%), respectively, compared with paclitaxel alone and by 92% and 88% (95% CI = 87% to 97% and 80% to 94%), respectively, compared with IgG alone. Combination therapy also reduced the weight of HeyA8MDR tumors by 47% (95% CI = 24% to 72%) compared with paclitaxel. Mice bearing SKOV3ip1 or HeyA8 tumors that were treated with combination therapy survived longer than those treated with paclitaxel alone (median survival = 144 versus 69 days and 46 versus 37 days, respectively). EA5-treated tumors had reduced microvascular density, proliferation, and VEGF protein and mRNA levels, with increased endothelial cell apoptosis. EphA2 was associated with Src, which was rapidly dephosphorylated after EA5 treatment. CONCLUSIONS EA5 in combination with paclitaxel decreased tumor growth in an orthotopic ovarian cancer mouse model through antiangiogenic mechanisms associated with reduced levels of VEGF and phosphorylated Src. Humanized antibody constructs against EphA2 are worthy of future study.
Fuzzy user modeling for adaptation in educational hypermedia

Education is a dominating application area for adaptive hypermedia. Web-based adaptive educational systems incorporate complex intelligent tutoring techniques, which enable the system to recognize an individual user and their needs, and consequently adapt the instructional sequence. The personalization is done through the user model, which collects information about the user. Since the description of user knowledge and features also involves imprecision and vagueness, a user model has to be designed that is able to deal with this uncertainty. This paper presents a way of describing the uncertainty of user knowledge, which is used for user knowledge modeling in an adaptive educational system. The system builds on the concept domain model. A fuzzy user model is proposed to deal with vagueness in the user's knowledge description. The model uses fuzzy sets for knowledge representation and linguistic rules for model updating. The data from the fuzzy user model form the basis for the system adaptation, which implements various navigation support techniques. The evaluation of the presented educational system has shown that the system and its adaptation techniques provide a valuable, easy-to-use tool, which positively affects user knowledge acquisition and, therefore, leads to better learning results.
Thalamic midline cell populations projecting to the nucleus accumbens, amygdala, and hippocampus in the rat

The organization of the thalamic midline efferents to the amygdaloid complex, hippocampal formation, and nucleus accumbens was investigated in the rat by means of multiple retrograde fluorescent tracing. The present findings indicate that these connections derive from separate cell populations of the thalamic midline, with a low degree of divergent collateralization upon more than one of the targets examined.
On Polarization Diversity in Mobile Communications

The fundamental principle of polarization diversity is discussed to show that not only the multipath signals, but the polarization vector can also be utilized to improve signal reception over fading channels. Three-dimensional polarization can achieve better performance improvement by utilizing the energy in all components of the incoming signal vector. A three-dimensional polarization diversity scheme with coherent detection and maximal ratio combining is proposed. Coherent detection necessitates estimation of the amplitude and phase of the propagation channel. It is shown that the average SNR is only degraded by errors in estimating the phase, but not the amplitude.
Efficient RNA pairwise structure comparison by SETTER method

MOTIVATION Understanding the architecture and function of RNA molecules requires methods for comparing and analyzing their 3D structures. Although a structural alignment of short RNAs is achievable in a reasonable amount of time, large structures represent much bigger challenge. However, the growth of the number of large RNAs deposited in the PDB database calls for the development of fast and accurate methods for analyzing their structures, as well as for rapid similarity searches in databases. RESULTS In this article a novel algorithm for an RNA structural comparison SETTER (SEcondary sTructure-based TERtiary Structure Similarity Algorithm) is introduced. SETTER uses a pairwise comparison method based on 3D similarity of the so-called generalized secondary structure units. For each pair of structures, SETTER produces a distance score and an indication of its statistical significance. SETTER can be used both for the structural alignments of structures that are already known to be homologous, as well as for 3D structure similarity searches and functional annotation. The algorithm presented is both accurate and fast and does not impose limits on the size of aligned RNA structures. AVAILABILITY The SETTER program, as well as all datasets, is freely available from http://siret.cz/hoksza/projects/setter/.
Cross-domain sparse coding

Sparse coding has shown its power as an effective data representation method. However, up to now, all the sparse coding approaches are limited within the single domain learning problem. In this paper, we extend the sparse coding to cross domain learning problem, which tries to learn from a source domain to a target domain with significant different distribution. We impose the Maximum Mean Discrepancy (MMD) criterion to reduce the cross-domain distribution difference of sparse codes, and also regularize the sparse codes by the class labels of the samples from both domains to increase the discriminative ability. The encouraging experiment results of the proposed cross-domain sparse coding algorithm on two challenging tasks --- image classification of photograph and oil painting domains, and multiple user spam detection --- show the advantage of the proposed method over other cross-domain data representation methods.
Comparison of Sodium and Potassium Intake with Excretion

SUMMARY Nine weU-motirated adults, knowledgeable about nutrition, kept food records, sared food portions equal to what had been eaten, and collected 24-hour urine samples for 3 consecutive days. Estimates of sodium and potassium intake were calculated from food table analyses of written food records and from flame photometric analyses of food portions. For each subject the mean of the estimates for each of the 3 days was compared with the mean of urine analyses for sodium and potassium for each of the 3 days. For the group of nine subjects, the average estimate of sodium intake from analyses of food records was 11% lower than the average estimate of urinary sodium excretion; the average estimate of sodium intake from analysis of food portions was 2% higher than urinary sodium excretion. For individuals, there were large differences between estimates of intake and measurement of sodium excretion. For the group of nine subjects, the average estimate of potassium intake from analysis of food records was less than 1% lower than the average estimate of potassium urinary excretion; the average estimate of potassium intake from analysis of food portions was 13% higher than potassium urinary excretion. For individuals, as with sodium, there were large differences between estimates of intake and measurement of potassium excretion.
Conventional chemotherapy or hypomethylating agents for older patients with acute myeloid leukaemia?

Acute myeloid leukaemia (AML) is the second more frequent hematologic malignancy in developed countries and primarily affects older adults with a median age at diagnosis of 69 years. Given the progressive ageing of the general population, the incidence of the disease in elderly people is expected to further increase in the years to come. Along with cytogenetics at diagnosis, age represents the most relevant prognostic factor in AML, in that the outcome steadily declines with increasing age. Reasons for poor prognosis include more frequent unfavourable karyotype and other adverse biologic characteristics, such as high rates of expression of genes drug resistance related and high prevalence of secondary AML. Noticeably, as compared with young adults, poorer results in elderly patients have been reported within any cytogenetic and molecular prognostic subgroup, because of frequent comorbid diseases, which render many patients ineligible to intensive chemotherapy. Therefore, predictive models have been developed with the aim of achieving best therapeutic results avoiding unnecessary toxicity. Following conventional induction therapy, older AML patients have complete remission rates in the range of 45–65%, and fewer than 10% of them survive for a minimum of 5 years. On the other hand, hypomethylating agents, such as azacytidine and decitabine offer the possibility of long‐term disease control without necessarily achieving complete remission and can represent a reasonable alternative to intensive chemotherapy. Either intensive chemotherapy or hypomethylating agents have lights and shadows, and the therapeutic selection is often influenced by physician's and patient's attitude rather than definite criteria. Research is progress in order to assess predictive biologic factors, which would help clinicians in the selection of patients who can take actual benefit from different therapeutic options. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Surgical repair of the ruptured Achilles Tendon

Forty patients with acute ruptures of the Achilles tendon were treated surgically by the same physician (T.B.Q.) during a period of 1947 to 1971. The average followup was 19 years. Ninety percent of the patients were men (average age 37.5 years) who were engaged in recreational sport activities. The majority denied a physical conditioning program. The acute ruptures were treated by a surgical procedure which consisted of a 15-cm incision on the medial aspect of the tendon with either the plantaris muscle being woven through the Achilles tendon in a clockwise fashion or a pull-out wire, supplemented with silk mattress sutures, being used to repair the ruptured tendon. The wound was closed and the patient's leg was im mobilized. The wire was removed at 6 weeks. The rehabilitation plan consisted of ambulation with a heel lift and elastic stocking (the height of the lift was gradually reduced) and toe exercises. The patients began walking downstairs backwards at 3 months and continued exercises until full range of motion was attained. Subjectively, the results were excellent as graded by the pa tients. Objectively, there were some minor deficits but they did not impede the overall function. On a scale of 1 (poor) to 4 (excellent), the clinical results were rated excellent (42%), good (36%), fair (15%), and poor (6%). This review has supported our contention that a positive Thompson test is a reliable indicator for a rupture of the Achilles tendon and that surgical treatment of complete ruptures is a successful mode by the procedure described followed by our rehabilitation program.