Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Efficacy of a Vaccine Formula against Tuberculosis in Cattle

“Test-and-slaughter” has been successful in industrialized countries to control and eradicate tuberculosis from cattle; however, this strategy is too expensive for developing nations, where the prevalence is especially high. Vaccination with the Calmette-Guérin (BCG) strain has been shown to protect against the development of lesions in vaccinated animals: mouse, cattle and wildlife species. In this study, the immune response and the pathology of vaccinated (BCG-prime and BCG prime-CFP-boosted) and unvaccinated (controls) calves were evaluated under experimental settings. A 106 CFU dose of the BCG strain was inoculated subcutaneously on the neck to two groups of ten animas each. Thirty days after vaccination, one of the vaccinated groups was boosted with an M. bovis culture filtrate protein (CFP). Three months after vaccination, the three groups of animals were challenged with 5×105 CFU via intranasal by aerosol with a field strain of M. bovis. The immune response was monitored throughout the study. Protection was assessed based on immune response (IFN-g release) prechallenge, presence of visible lesions in lymph nodes and lungs at slaughter, and presence of bacilli in lymph nodes and lung samples in histological analysis. Vaccinated cattle, either with the BCG alone or with BCG and boosted with CFP showed higher IFN-g response, fewer lesions, and fewer bacilli per lesion than unvaccinated controls after challenge. Animals with low levels of IFN-g postvaccine-prechallenge showed more lesions than animals with high levels. Results from this study support the argument that vaccination could be incorporated into control programs to reduce the incidence of TB in cattle in countries with high prevalence.
Opportunistic scheduling with limited channel state information: A rate distortion approach

We consider an opportunistic communication system in which a transmitter selects one of multiple channels over which to schedule a transmission, based on partial knowledge of the network state. We characterize a fundamental limit on the rate that channel state information must be conveyed to the transmitter in order to meet a constraint on expected throughput. This problem is modeled as a causal rate distortion optimization of a Markov source. We introduce a novel distortion metric capturing the impact of imperfect channel state information on throughput. We compute a closed-form expression for the causal information rate distortion function for the case of two channels, as well as an algorithmic upper bound on the causal rate distortion function. Finally, we characterize the gap between the causal information rate distortion and the causal entropic rate-distortion functions.
Race, class, politics, and the disappearance of work: a rejoinder

I very much appreciate Jennifer Hochschild’s thoughtful commentary on my article, “When Work Disappears: New Implications for Race and Urban Poverty in the Global Economy” (1999). She focuses on two important areas that, in her judgment, were not sufficiently addressed in my article, namely a “comparative analysis of the impact of collective joblessness across racial and ethnic groups”, and the “political impact of sustained and concentrated joblessness”. I welcome the opportunity to respond directly to her arguments. First of all, I completely agree with her observation that, like many poor innercity African–American neighbourhoods, there are deeply distressed white communities in the US, particularly in rural areas and in smaller towns that have recorded a decline in life expectancy among those aged 45–54 since the turn of the twenty-first century. I also agree that we need more comparative research on the effect of joblessness in different communities. Although the focus of “When Work Disappears” was not explicitly comparative, Hochschild does acknowledge my general class-based arguments that sustained joblessness has similar consequences across racial and ethnic groups. However, I also discussed a specific study that clearly demonstrates this point – a study by Jahoda, Lazarsfeld, and Zeisel (1971) on the effects of sustained joblessness in Marienthal, a small industrial community in Austria, during the Great Depression in the 1930s. I pointed out in my article that this study documented the devastating impact of the closing of the town’s factory, which “was not simply a place of work, it was the center of social life” (Jahoda, Lazarsfeld, and Zeisel 1971, vii). I noted that the “idleness and lack of discipline due to persistent joblessness in Marienthal is not unlike the idleness and undisciplined behaviour associated with persistent joblessness in today’s poor inner-city neighbourhoods” (Wilson 1999, 493). Hochschild then draws an interesting comparison between my work and the work of Chetty and his colleagues on income mobility (Chetty et al. 2014). She points out that Chetty et al.’s findings – based on an analysis of the federal income tax records of more than 40 million children and their parents from
MACULAR FUNCTION IN EYES WITH EARLY AGE-RELATED MACULAR DEGENERATION WITH OR WITHOUT CONTRALATERAL LATE AGE-RELATED MACULAR DEGENERATION

Purpose: To evaluate psychophysical and electrophysiologic responses in eyes with early age-related macular degeneration (AMD) without a decrease in visual acuity and with or without late AMD in the fellow eye. Methods: Fifteen patients (mean age: 67.9 ± 7.20 years) with early AMD in both eyes (AMD1 group, 15 eyes) and 15 patients (mean age: 71.40 ± 7.06 years) with early AMD in one eye and late AMD in the fellow eye (AMD2 group, 15 eyes) were enrolled. They were compared to 15 age-similar normal control subjects. LogMAR visual acuity (VA), macular sensitivity by MP-1 microperimetry, and multifocal electroretinograms (mfERG) were assessed in control, AMD1, and AMD2 eyes. mfERG response amplitude density (RAD, nV/deg2) of the N1-P1 component of first order binary kernels was measured. Results: When compared to controls, AMD1 and AMD2 eyes showed a significant (analysis of variance, P < 0.01) decrease in MP-1 microperimetry assessed in the 0–2.5 and 2.5–5 degrees of the macula, significantly correlated (Pearson test, P < 0.01) to the corresponding significant decrease (P < 0.01) in mfERG N1-P1 RADs assessed in the 0–2.5 and 2.5–5 degrees. In AMD1 and AMD2 eyes, VA and mfERG N1-P1 RADs assessed in the 5–20 degrees were similar (P > 0.01) to controls. VA, MP-1, and mfERG values were not significantly different in AMD1 and AMD2 eyes. Conclusion: In eyes with early AMD there is a dysfunction of preganglionic elements in the central 0–5 retinal degrees detectable by mfERG or MP-1 microperimetry. This impairment is not further influenced by the presence of late AMD in the fellow eye.
Fast boosting trees for classification, pose detection, and boundary detection on a GPU

Discriminative classifiers are often the computational bottleneck in medical imaging applications such as foreground/background classification, 3D pose detection, and boundary delineation. To overcome this bottleneck, we propose a fast technique based on boosting tree classifiers adapted for GPU computation. Unlike standard tree-based algorithms, our method does not have any recursive calls which makes it GPU-friendly. The algorithm is integrated into an optimized Hierarchical Detection Network (HDN) for 3D pose detection and boundary detection in 3D medical images. On desktop GPUs, we demonstrate an 80× speedup in simple classification of Liver in MRI volumes, and 30× speedup in multi-object localization of fetal head structures in ultrasound images, and 10× speedup on 2.49 mm accurate Liver boundary detection in MRI.
Characterization of chitosan in acetic acid: Rheological and thermal studies

This study examined the influence of temperature, concentration, shearing time, and storage time on the rheological properties, i.e. the dynamic viscosity and shear stress, as a function of shear rate of chitosan solubilized in weakly acid solutions. The results showed that shear thinning behavior (pseudoplastic non-Newtonian behavior) was pronounced at temperatures from 20 to 50 °C, but was more remarkable at lower temperature. In addition, the activation energy value derived from ln h vs. 1/T data was found to be 20.86 kJ mol-1. When the effect of concentration was studied, the shear thinning behavior was pronounced at all concentrations. The effect of shearing time on the dynamic viscosity and shear stress of chitosan solutions did not show any significant differences at all shearing times applied in this study. Furthermore, an increase in viscosity was obtained with extending the period of storage to 3 months, after which a drop in viscosity was recorded. Thermal properties of chitosan films were also investigated by employing thermogravimetric analyses (TGA) and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) in this work. Results of TGA revealed that the decomposition of the chitosan film proceeds in 2 distinct stages, which was confirmed with DSC curves.
A Global Line Matching algorithm for 2D laser scan matching in regular environment

Some line matching algorithms have been proposed for the laser scan matching problem. But lots of them do the matching between current scan frame and the last one, rather than current frame and the global map. This work proposes a real-time laser scan matching method named Global Line Matching, which matches current scan frame to the global map, leading to a better result. This paper presents the algorithm in detail and shows some applications based on simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM). Results on a simulated environment (USARSim [1]) are demonstrated, showing that this algorithm is capable of mapping unmodified indoor environment reliably.
Self-optimized autonomous routing protocol for wireless sensor networks with cross layer architecture

Presently, the field of wireless sensor networks (WSNs) is an important and challenging research area. Advancements in sensor networks enable a wide range of environmental monitoring and object tracking applications. Moreover, multihop routing in WSN is affected by new nodes constantly entering or leaving the network. Therefore, nature based self-optimized and independent mechanism is required to tackle problems arise in WSN. The ant inspired routing has shown an excellent performance for WSNs. In this paper, the model of self-optimized autonomous routing algorithm BIOSARP with cross layer architecture for WSN and its results are presented. Certain parameters like energy level, delay and velocity are considered while making decisions. Energy level and velocity metrics are trade in from physical layer to network layer while discovering an optimal route and also in initialization process. These robust decisions will come up with the optimized route for WSN.
FERTILITY TRANSITION IN SOUTH AFRICA AND ITS IMPLICATIONS ON THE FOUR MAJOR POPULATION GROUPS

In general there seems to be widespread agreement that fertility began to decline among all major population groups in South Africa prior to the end of apartheid. It occurred at a much faster level for Whites and Asians as compared to Africans and Coloureds. This occurred amidst the impoverishment of millions (especially African women), stark inequalities and the disempowerment of women. Although South Africa has undergone a dramatic political transition in the last decade, many of the distortions and dynamics introduced by apartheid continue to reproduce poverty and perpetuate inequality. The South African population policy (Dept. of Welfare, 1998) argues that the basic demographic factors fertility, migration and mortality are an integral part of poverty prevalence in South Africa. These demographic factors cannot be seen in isolation from social factors such as education, unemployment, poor health and housing quality and their interrelationships with poverty. Thus, on the one hand, poverty persists, while on the other hand, fertility declines. This is in stark contrast to the experience in other parts of subSaharan Africa, where poverty usually goes hand in hand with high fertility. This paper investigates issues around lower fertility, factors contributing to it, its impact on the different population groups as well policies to address its impact.
Investigating the Feasibility of Rapid MRI for Image-Guided Motion Management in Lung Cancer Radiotherapy

Cycle-to-cycle variations in respiratory motion can cause significant geometric and dosimetric errors in the administration of lung cancer radiation therapy. A common limitation of the current strategies for motion management is that they assume a constant, reproducible respiratory cycle. In this work, we investigate the feasibility of using rapid MRI for providing long-term imaging of the thorax in order to better capture cycle-to-cycle variations. Two nonsmall-cell lung cancer patients were imaged (free-breathing, no extrinsic contrast, and 1.5 T scanner). A balanced steady-state-free-precession (b-SSFP) sequence was used to acquire cine-2D and cine-3D (4D) images. In the case of Patient 1 (right midlobe lesion, ~40 mm diameter), tumor motion was well correlated with diaphragmatic motion. In the case of Patient 2, (left upper-lobe lesion, ~60 mm diameter), tumor motion was poorly correlated with diaphragmatic motion. Furthermore, the motion of the tumor centroid was poorly correlated with the motion of individual points on the tumor boundary, indicating significant rotation and/or deformation. These studies indicate that image quality and acquisition speed of cine-2D MRI were adequate for motion monitoring. However, significant improvements are required to achieve comparable speeds for truly 4D MRI. Despite several challenges, rapid MRI offers a feasible and attractive tool for noninvasive, long-term motion monitoring.
Derivation of efficient FSM from loop nests

Pipelined execution is one of the most important optimizations in hardware design to improve hardware utilization rate, and hence the throughput. Loop pipelining is a transformation available in High Level Synthesis tools to execute multiple iterations of a loop in a pipeline. Nested loop pipelining is a related technique that improves hardware utilization rate when the iteration count of the innermost loop is small. However, it is also known to increase the complexity of the control, and hence degrading frequency. In this paper, we present an automatic transformation targeting HLS that improves the effectiveness of nested loop pipelining, by efficient implementations of the control-path. Specifically, we present (i) an analytical model that captures the trade-off between gain in cycles and loss in frequency, (ii), automatic derivation of efficient Finite State Machine from loop nests, and (iii) an efficient implementation of the derived FSM that improves the performance of synthesized hardware.
Aligning with the Battered Woman to Protect Both Mother and Child

Summary The act of addressing domestic violence in the context of Children Protective Service (CPS) work has been inconsistent at best. Generally, battered women and CPS workers collude in avoiding the subject for reasons ranging from fear of children's removal to anticipation of an emotional response to increasing caseload time restrictions. Recently some innovative programs and training efforts have begun to help CPS workers navigate these very complex intersections and assessments. This paper explores the historic background to these efforts. It then describes a sample of innovative CPS programs and explores the components of a specific training program. The latter was a Department of Health and Human Service funded program which was designed at UCLA for the largest Public Child Welfare agency in the country. An assessment instrument was specifically developed for use in the training and agency; it is outlined here. The author examines the obstacles the training encountered as well as the resistance to the implementation of a comprehensive approach which follows the assessment instrument. This examination led to a consideration of policy issues that were addressed and those which require ongoing attention.
Pharmacological Interventions for the MATRICS Cognitive Domains in Schizophrenia: What’s the Evidence?

Schizophrenia is a disabling, chronic psychiatric disorder with a prevalence rate of 0.5–1% in the general population. Symptoms include positive (e.g., delusions, hallucinations), negative (e.g., blunted affect, social withdrawal), as well as cognitive symptoms (e.g., memory and attention problems). Although 75–85% of patients with schizophrenia report cognitive impairments, the underlying neuropharmacological mechanisms are not well understood and currently no effective treatment is available for these impairments. This has led to the Measurement and Treatment Research to Improve Cognition in Schizophrenia (MATRICS) initiative, which established seven cognitive domains that are fundamentally impaired in schizophrenia. These domains include verbal learning and memory, visual learning and memory, working memory, attention and vigilance, processing speed, reasoning and problem solving, and social cognition. Recently, a growing number of studies have been conducted trying to identify the underlying neuropharmacological mechanisms of cognitive impairments in schizophrenia patients. Specific cognitive impairments seem to arise from different underlying neuropharmacological mechanisms. However, most review articles describe cognition in general and an overview of the mechanisms involved in these seven separate cognitive domains is currently lacking. Therefore, we reviewed the underlying neuropharmacological mechanisms focusing on the domains as established by the MATRICS initiative which are considered most crucial in schizophrenia.
Envelope-Modified Single-Cycle Simian Immunodeficiency Virus Selectively Enhances Antibody Responses and Partially Protects against Repeated, Low-Dose Vaginal Challenge

ABSTRACT Immunization of rhesus macaques with strains of simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) that are limited to a single cycle of infection elicits T-cell responses to multiple viral gene products and antibodies capable of neutralizing lab-adapted SIV, but not neutralization-resistant primary isolates of SIV. In an effort to improve upon the antibody responses, we immunized rhesus macaques with three strains of single-cycle SIV (scSIV) that express envelope glycoproteins modified to lack structural features thought to interfere with the development of neutralizing antibodies. These envelope-modified strains of scSIV lacked either five potential N-linked glycosylation sites in gp120, three potential N-linked glycosylation sites in gp41, or 100 amino acids in the V1V2 region of gp120. Three doses consisting of a mixture of the three envelope-modified strains of scSIV were administered on weeks 0, 6, and 12, followed by two booster inoculations with vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV) G trans-complemented scSIV on weeks 18 and 24. Although this immunization regimen did not elicit antibodies capable of detectably neutralizing SIVmac239 or SIVmac251UCD, neutralizing antibody titers to the envelope-modified strains were selectively enhanced. Virus-specific antibodies and T cells were observed in the vaginal mucosa. After 20 weeks of repeated, low-dose vaginal challenge with SIVmac251UCD, six of eight immunized animals versus six of six naïve controls became infected. Although immunization did not significantly reduce the likelihood of acquiring immunodeficiency virus infection, statistically significant reductions in peak and set point viral loads were observed in the immunized animals relative to the naïve control animals.
σECF factors of gram-positive bacteria

The survival of bacteria to different environmental conditions depends on the activation of adaptive mechanisms, which are intricately driven through gene regulation. Because transcriptional initiation is considered to be the major step in the control of bacterial genes, we discuss the characteristics and roles of the sigma factors, addressing (1) their structural, functional and phylogenetic classification; (2) how their activity is regulated; and (3) the promoters recognized by these factors. Finally, we focus on a specific group of alternative sigma factors, the so-called σECF factors, in Bacillus subtilis and some of the main species that comprise the CMNR group, providing information on the roles they play in the microorganisms’ physiology and indicating some of the genes whose transcription they regulate.
Markit : A digital clipping interaction from paper media using sticky note metaphor

We demonstrate a digital clipping system, called Markit, which enables users to clip information on printed books or magazines digitally. Advance in technology has changed the form of information clipping from only paper media to digital media. However, clipping information from a paper to digital media is still a burden task for users; they must first capture information by camera or scanner and manually organize the captured data. This research focuses on reducing the cost of clipping paper-based information as digital media information. For this purpose, we propose Markit, which is a digital information clipping system by marking sticky notes on the paper media. Our system offers users benefits of both paper media and digital media.
The IGF Hormonal Network in Endometrial Cancer: Functions, Regulation, and Targeting Approaches

Epidemiological as well as clinical and experimental data identified the insulin-like growth factors (IGF1, IGF2) as important players in gynecological cancers in general, and endometrial tumors in particular. The IGF1 receptor (IGF1R), which mediates the proliferative and anti-apoptotic activities of both ligands, emerged in recent years as a promising therapeutic target in oncology. However, most clinical trials conducted so far led to mixed results, emphasizing the need to identify biomarkers that can predict responsiveness to anti-IGF1R-targeted therapies. This article will review recent data regarding the role and expression of IGF system components in endometrial cancer. In addition, we will review data on the interplay between the IGF signaling pathway and tumor suppressors p53 and breast cancer susceptibility gene-1 (BRCA1). Anti-oncogenes p53 and BRCA1 play a key role in the etiology of gynecological cancers and, therefore, their interaction with IGF1R is of high relevance in translational terms. A better understanding of the complex mechanisms underlying the regulation of the IGF system will improve our ability to develop effective treatment modalities for endometrial tumors.
A study on the degrees of freedom in touchless interaction

During the last few years, we have been witnessing a widespread adoption of touchless technologies in the context of surgical procedures. Touchless interfaces are advantageous in that they can preserve sterility around the patient, allowing surgeons to visualize medical images without having to physically touch any control or to rely on a proxy. Such interfaces have been tailored to interact with 2D medical images but not with 3D reconstructions of anatomical data, since such an interaction requires at least three degrees of freedom. In this paper, we discuss the results of a user study in which a mouse-based interface has been compared with two Kinect-based touchless interfaces which allow users to interact with 3D data with up to nine degrees of freedom. The experimental results show that there is a significant relation between the number of degrees of freedom simultaneously controlled by the user and the number of degrees of freedom required to perform, in a touchless way, an accurate manipulation task.