Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
HSP70 Domain II of Mycobacterium tuberculosis Modulates Immune Response and Protective Potential of F1 and LcrV Antigens of Yersinia pestis in a Mouse Model

No ideal vaccine exists to control plague, a deadly dangerous disease caused by Yersinia pestis. In this context, we cloned, expressed and purified recombinant F1, LcrV antigens of Y. pestis and heat shock protein70 (HSP70) domain II of M. tuberculosis in E. coli. To evaluate the protective potential of each purified protein alone or in combination, Balb/C mice were immunized. Humoral and cell mediated immune responses were evaluated. Immunized animals were challenged with 100 LD50 of Y. pestis via intra-peritoneal route. Vaccine candidates i.e., F1 and LcrV generated highly significant titres of anti-F1 and anti-LcrV IgG antibodies. A significant difference was noticed in the expression level of IL-2, IFN-γ and TNF-α in splenocytes of immunized animals. Significantly increased percentages of CD4+ and CD8+ T cells producing IFN-γ in spleen of vaccinated animals were observed in comparison to control group by flow cytometric analysis. We investigated whether the F1, LcrV and HSP70(II) antigens alone or in combination can effectively protect immunized animals from any histopathological changes. Signs of histopathological lesions noticed in lung, liver, kidney and spleen of immunized animals on 3rd day post challenge whereas no lesions in animals that survived to day 20 post-infection were observed. Immunohistochemistry showed bacteria in lung, liver, spleen and kidney on 3rd day post-infection whereas no bacteria was observed on day 20 post-infection in surviving animals in LcrV, LcrV+HSP70(II), F1+LcrV, and F1+LcrV+HSP70(II) vaccinated groups. A significant difference was observed in the expression of IL-2, IFN-γ, TNF-α, and CD4+/CD8+ T cells secreting IFN-γ in the F1+LcrV+HSP70(II) vaccinated group in comparison to the F1+LcrV vaccinated group. Three combinations that included LcrV+HSP70(II), F1+LcrV or F1+LcrV+HSP70(II) provided 100% protection, whereas LcrV alone provided only 75% protection. These findings suggest that HSP70(II) of M. tuberculosis can be a potent immunomodulator for F1 and LcrV containing vaccine candidates against plague.
SPECIALIZATION AUDITORY PATHWAYS IN THE MOLE

To get morphological substrates for sensory specialization in the subterranean mammals, we investigate both auditory and visual pathways in the mole. The inferior colliculus (IC), an auditory relay, projects not only to medial geniculate, the major gateway to the auditory cortex, but also to the lateral geniculate (LG), the major gateway to the visual cortex. Further evidence is that the LG does not send many fibers to the cortex in the mole. Instead, the auditory inputs to the LG are likely to be conveyed to the suprachiasmatic hypothalamic nucleus (SCN), which plays a role in photoperiodic functions in common mammals. Auditory inputs to the SCN may subserve periodic reproductive behaviors in the exclusively separated territorial domains of subterranean mammals.
The LKIF Core Ontology of Basic Legal Concepts

In this paper we describe a legal core ontology that is part of a generic architecture for legal knowledge systems, which will enable the interchange of knowledge between existing legal knowledge systems. This Legal Knowledge Interchange Format, is under development in the Estrella project and has two main roles: 1) the translation of legal knowledge bases written in different representation formats and formalisms and 2) a knowledge representation formalism that is part of a larger architecture for developing legal knowledge systems. A legal (core) ontology can play an important role in the translation of existing legal knowledge bases to other representation formats, in particular into LKIF as the basis for articulate knowledge serving. We describe the methodology underlying the LKIF core ontology, introduce the concepts it defines, and discuss its use in the formalisation of an EU directive.
Learning to Classify Data Streams with Imbalanced Class Distributions

Streaming data is pervasive in a multitude of data mining applications. One fundamental problem in the task of mining streaming data is distributional drift over time. Streams may also exhibit high and varying degrees of class imbalance, which can further complicate the task. In scenarios like these, class imbalance is particularly diﬃcult to overcome and has not been as thoroughly studied. In this paper, we consider the issue of high class imbalacne in conjunction with data streams. We propose a method called Boundary Deﬁnition, which relies on building the classiﬁers by stressing on the boundary cases as the streams arrive. We employ a sequential validation framework, which we believe is the most meaningful option in the context of streaming imbalanced data.
Impaired lysosomes in a temperature-sensitive mutant of Chinese hamster ovary cells

We describe here the properties of a mutant of Chinese hamster ovary cells that expresses a conditional-lethal mutation affecting dense lysosomes. This mutant, termed V.24. 1, is a member of the End4 complementation group of temperature-sensitive mutants selected for resistance to protein toxins (Colbaugh, P. A., C.-Y. Kao, S.-P. Shia, M. Stookey, and R. K. Draper. 1988. Somatic Cell Mol. Genet. 14:499- 507). Vesicles present in postnuclear supernatants prepared from V.24. 1 cells harvested at the restrictive temperature had a 50% reduction in acidification activity, assessed by the ATP-stimulated accumulation of the dye acridine orange in acidic vesicles. To investigate whether specific populations of vesicles were impaired in acidification, we measured acidification activity in three subcellular fractions prepared from Percoll gradients: one containing endosomal and Golgi markers, one containing buoyant lysosomes, and the third containing dense lysosomes. Activity in dense lysosomes was reduced by 90%, activity in the buoyant lysosome fraction was unaffected, and activity in the endosome-Golgi fraction was mildly reduced. The activity of three lysosomal enzymes-- beta-hexosaminidase, beta-galactosidase, and beta-glucocerebrosidase-- was also reduced in dense lysosomes but nearly normal in the buoyant lysosome fraction. However, beta-hexosaminidase and beta- glucocerebrosidase activity was increased two- to threefold in the endosome-Golgi fraction. We conclude that the lesion selectively impairs dense lysosomes but has little effect on properties of buoyant lysosomes.
Differential uncertainties and risk attitudes between conventional and organic producers: the case of Spanish arable crop farmers

The growing importance of economic factors in farmers' decisions to go organic has raised interest in characterizing the economic behavior of organic versus conventional farms. In general, published analyses so far have not considered differential uncertainties, abilities to control production risk, and farmers' risk preferences between conventional and organic practices when comparing these techniques. Our article attempts to assess this issue. We use a model of farmer decision under risk to analyze the differential values between organic and conventional Spanish arable crop farms and to assess the incentives for adoption of organic practices. Results show that organic and conventional farms do have different production risks as well as different aversions to risk. Organic price premiums and subsidies are found to be powerful instruments to motivate adoption of organic techniques.
Functional Activation of Myelin-Specific T Cells by Virus-Induced Molecular Mimicry1

Molecular mimicry is the process by which T cells activated in response to determinants on an infecting microorganism cross-react with self epitopes, leading to an autoimmune disease. Normally, infection of SJL/J mice with the BeAn strain of Theiler’s murine encephalomyelitis virus (TMEV) results in a persistent CNS infection, leading to a chronic progressive, CD4+ T cell-mediated demyelinating disease. Myelin damage is initiated by T cell responses to virus persisting in CNS APCs, and progressive demyelinating disease (50 days postinfection) is perpetuated by myelin epitope-specific CD4+ T cells activated by epitope spreading. We developed an infectious model of molecular mimicry by inserting a sequence encompassing the immunodominant myelin epitope, proteolipid protein (PLP) 139–151, into the coding region of a nonpathogenic TMEV variant. PLP139-TMEV-infected mice developed a rapid onset paralytic inflammatory, demyelinating disease paralleled by the activation of PLP139–151-specific CD4+ Th1 responses within 10–14 days postinfection. The current studies demonstrate that the early onset demyelinating disease induced by PLP139-TMEV is the direct result of autoreactive PLP139–151-specific CD4+ T cell responses. PLP139–151-specific CD4+ T cells from PLP139-TMEV-infected mice transferred demyelinating disease to naive recipients and PLP139–151-specific tolerance before infection prevented clinical disease. Finally, infection with the mimic virus at sites peripheral to the CNS induced early demyelinating disease, suggesting that the PLP139–151-specific CD4+ T cells could be activated in the periphery and traffic to the CNS. Collectively, infection with PLP139–151 mimic encoding TMEV serves as an excellent model for molecular mimicry by inducing pathologic myelin-specific CD4+ T cells via a natural virus infection.
Psychoéducation et schizophrénie : aléas d’une propédeutique

La psychoeducation, nee il y a une vingtaine d’annees, est l’objet aujourd’hui d’un veritable engouement, bien au-dela de la psychiatrie, en raison d’arguments economiques. Est-elle vraiment efficace ? Cette etude clinique est descriptive de l’attitude et des reponses de 17 patients schizophrenes confrontes a une experience psychoeducationnelle dans le cadre d’un hopital de jour de secteur. Elle montre que ces modules psychoeducatifs mettent en peril et risquent d’entraver l’installation d’une alliance therapeutique. Ils semblent, en effet, favoriser la reticence, la mefiance et le faux-semblant. Par ailleurs, la revue bibliographique montre leur inefficacite a favoriser l’observance du traitement et la diminution des rechutes, ainsi que leur absence d’impact sur la symptomatologie. Ainsi, la psychoeducation peut compromettre l’alliance therapeutique et renforcer l’isolement du patient.
A Novel Bursting Mechanism of Type A Neurons in Injured Dorsal Root Ganglia

Using intracellular recording in vivo, the bursting behaviors were investigated in the neurons of chronically compressed dorsal root ganglia of the adult rat. In most cases, the first spike of a burst emerged from amplitude-increasing damped subthreshold membrane potential oscillation (SMPO) and the discharge terminated by an amplitude-decreasing damped SMPO. The rhythms of these bursting behaviors are all irregular. Since some researchers found that the stochastic dynamics can also produce similar bursting pattern, the deterministic dynamics of interevent interval (IEI) series obtained from raw membrane potential recording was detected by extraction of the hierarchy of unstable periodic orbits (UPOs) in the windowed IEI series. The results showed a number of statistically significant UPOs of order-one, order-two, and order-three. These orbits form a complex but predictable lattice of regions in which the dynamics of the bursting occurrence is deterministic. Based on a complete classification scheme, the investigated bursting can be depicted by the elliptic bursting dynamics. The significance of the finding that a neuron in the injured dorsal root ganglion has such dynamics is also discussed.
In situ Fiber Optic Dissolution Monitoring of a Vitamin B12 Solid Dosage Formulation

The rapid dissolution rate of many water-soluble, immediate release solid dosage forms requires a dissolution analyzer that is fast,sensitive,customizable for frequent measurements,and able to generate data of high precision and quality.These requirements fit perfectly with today’s in situ fiber optic technology.The Rainbow Dynamic Dissolution Monitor was used in this study to demonstrate and evaluate the dissolution behavior of 500 mg Vitamin B12 (cyanocobalamin) tablets in degassed water, simulated gastric fluid (SGF),and phosphate buffer at stirring speeds as high as 100 rpm. Upon dissolution,Vitamin B12 tablets produce rather turbid suspensions that may be expected to cause problems for in situ measurements. However, the effect of light scattering by suspensions is largely eliminated when the second derivative of the absorbance signal is used in quantitation. Excellent data correlation was observed between the different media and the standard when using this method. Figure 1: Structure of cyanocobalamin (Vitamin B12) dx.doi. org/10.14227/DT100403P20
Improving TCP performance over multi-slot GSM

In this paper, we examine the effects of TCP over a multi-slot GSM testbed as well as improving the performance of TCP using a smart link-level retransmission scheme. The smart link-level retransmission scheme (also known as the snoop protocol (Balakrishnan et al. 1995)), which was developed at the University of California in Berkeley, was designed to reduce the number of duplicate acknowledgements from returning to the sender by performing local retransmissions of the lost packets from the cache of TCP packets at the base station before the TCP timeout expires. We conclude with simulated results conducted on the multi-slot GSM and WaveLAN testbeds and found some differences between the testbeds.
Emotions as an Intervening Variable in the Creative Process

OF THESIS Emotions as an Intervening Variable in the Creative Process This thesis explored the impact that emotionally laden stimuli had on individuals’ creative process and creative products as assessed by independent domain experts. Sixtyfive undergraduate students were randomly separated into three treatment conditions and instructed to create an artistic collage composition on the theme of New Year’s Eve. Two of the treatment groups received, in addition to the general instructions set, a text based priming stimulus that was either an emotionally laden narrative or factual narrative about New Year’s Eve. All participants were asked to complete a task reflection questionnaire and the FourSight cognitive style measure. Using the Consensual Assessment Technique framework, six independent domain experts rated each collage in 18 distinct dimensions including Creativity. Although there was no significant difference in the Creativity Scale score between the three treatments groups (the group that received the emotional narrative was hypothesized to outperform the other two groups), an interaction effect emerged between the presence of the emotionally laden narrative and two of FourSight’s cognitive style preferences, which modulated creative performance. Implications of these findings are discussed as well as limitations and recommendations for future research efforts in the topic of emotion and creative cognition. ___________________________________ ___________________________________ Diego E. Uribe Larach ___________________________________ Date
Hemodynamic Effects of Atrial Septal Pacing in Cardiac Resynchronization Therapy Patients

Introduction: Spontaneous or pacing‐induced interatrial conduction delay may affect the outcome of heart failure patients treated with cardiac resynchronization therapy (CRT). The objective of this study was to evaluate the impact of the atrial pacing site (right atrial appendage, RAA; and low interatrial septum, LIS) during biventricular (BV) pacing on the left ventricular (LV) systolic function in candidates for CRT.
Using mobile relays to prolong the lifetime of wireless sensor networks

In this paper we investigate the benefits of a heterogeneous architecture for wireless sensor networks composed of a few resource rich mobile nodes and a large number of simple static nodes. These mobile nodes can either act as mobile relays or mobile sinks. To investigate the performance of these two options and the trade-offs associated with these two options, we first consider a finite network. We then compute the lifetime for different routing algorithms for three cases (i) when the network is all static (ii) when there is one mobile sink and (iii) when there is one mobile relay. We find that using the mobile node as a sink results in the maximum improvement in lifetime. We contend however that in hostile terrains, it might not always be possible for the sink to be mobile. We then investigate the performance of a large dense network with one mobile relay and show that the improvement in network lifetime over an all static network is upper bounded by a factor of four. Also, the proof implies that the mobile relay needs to stay only within a two hop radius of the sink. We then construct a joint mobility and routing algorithm which comes close to the upper bound. However this algorithm requires all the nodes in the network to be aware of the location of the mobile node. We then proposed an alternative algorithm, which achieves the same performance, but requires only a limited number of nodes in the network to be aware of the location of the mobile. We finally compare the performance of the mobile relay and mobile sink and show that for a densely deployed sensor field of radius R hops, we require O(R) mobile relays to achieve the same performance as the mobile sink.
Stationarity of the EEG series

The authors introduce a routine for the analysis of stationarity, which is based on the weak stationarity criteria. From the application of the weak stationarity criteria, one see that only in some cases or in some epochs of a series will the information obtained from these algorithms be reliable. Therefore, one can only obtain dynamic information in those cases. As a complement to this finding, the correlation dimension and the Lyapunov exponents were calculated for the different EEG series analyzed. >
Imaging of the patulous eustachian tube: high-resolution CT evaluation with multiplanar reconstruction technique

Objective—To evaluate the 3D anatomy of the ET and its surrounding tissues in cases with or without patulous Eustachian tube (ET) using CT with the multiplanar reconstruction (MPR) technique. Material and Methods—Twenty patients with a patulous ET and 25 without middle ear problems were investigated. After performing a temporal bone CT examination, MPR images of the ET were reconstructed and measurements were made. Results—The ET lumen and its surrounding tissues were clearly identified. In the patulous ET group, the ET lumen was open throughout the cartilaginous portion and the volume of the low-density area was smaller in size than in the controls. In unilateral patulous ET patients, the anatomical features were found to be similar on both sides, in spite of the fact that the non-involved side did not show symptoms associated with a patulous ET. Conclusion—For the first time, we were able to obtain clear reconstructed images of the patulous ET and its surrounding structure and to study its anatomical features. This method is useful for obtaining a better understanding of the ET and ET-related diseases such as patulous ET.
Activités de production orale et émotions : gérer la complexité dans l’instant de l’échange

Les personnes expatriees a Paris vivent une situation d’exolinguisme parfois eprouvante. Les difficultes pour entrer dans les echanges portent sur de nombreux niveaux d’ordre linguistique, paralinguistique, metacognitif et pragmatique. Cet article presente un travail de recherche qui vise a explorer les situations de difficulte de communication en situation exolingue. Par le biais d’entretiens qualitatifs, l’analyse de moments precis d’interactions permet de degager les emotions ressenties, le contexte de leur emergence et leurs causes. Ce travail met en relief l’importance de la comprehension des elements contextuels et le role de l’incorporation des grilles semiologiques.
RADIOFARMAKA UNTUK DETEKSI INFLAMASI DAN INFEKSI.

RADIOFARMAKA UNTUK DETEKSI INFLAMASI DAN INFEKSI. Suatu penyakit atau adanya rasa sakit di dalam tubuh dapat disebabkan karena adanya reaksi inflamasi atau infeksi. Salah satu metode yang dapat dipakai untuk mendeteksi adanya reaksi ini adalah teknik nuklir menggunakan radiofarmaka sebagai radioperunut. Beberapa jenis radiofarmaka dengan mekanisme akumulasi yang spesifik untuk masing-masing radiofarmaka telah digunakan di bidang kedokteran nuklir untuk diagnosis inflamasi dan infeksi dengan hasil yang memuaskan. Radiofarmaka tersebut antara lain teknesium-99m-heksametilpropilenamin-sel darah putih ( 99m TC—HMPAO—SDP), indium- 111 –oksin- sel darah putih ( 111 In—oksin-SDP), teknesium-99m-immunoglobin G ( 99m TC —IgG ) dan teknesium—99m—infecton ( 99m TC infecton ). Dalam visualisasi menggunakan metode ini, perlu diketahui runtunan pengobatan dari pasien karena pemakaian obat tertentu dapat mempengaruhi sifat biologis radiofarmaka, yang mengakibatkan kesalahan diagnosis. Tinjauan ini membahas beberapa radiofarmaka untuk diagnosis inflamasi dan infeksi serta mekanisme akumulasinya di dalam tubuh. Selain itu, dalam tinjauan ini diuraikan juga interaksi radiofarmaka tersebut dengan beberapa obat.
Evolution of Mobile Money Technologies in Developing Nations: Successes and Lessons

In developing regions of the world such as Sub-Saharan Africa, access to basic financial services such as funds transfer and bill payments are unavailable to over 70% of the population. Mobile money technologies, which entail the use of mobile technology in facilitating financial transactions, have presented themselves as viable methods of reaching this segment of the population known as the unbanked. However, there is an unfortunate dearth of studies that examine the limitations of mobile money implementations and provide recommendations for improving this important tool for financial inclusion. To this end, this research provides a review of the evolution of mobile money technologies as an example of user centered innovation and identifies the important actors in the mobile money ecosystem. Through a case study of the performance of mobile money deployments in two regions of Africa (Kenya and Nigeria), critical success factors are identified and discussed. Specifically, it is highlighted that : a mobile first approach to designing the ecosystem, balanced regulatory policies, a useable base of distribution agents and alignment with the needs of the unbanked are four important factors for successful mobile money implementations in developing nations.