Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Low Dose Leishmania major Promotes a Transient T Helper Cell Type 2 Response That Is Down-regulated by Interferon γ–producing CD8+ T Cells

An unresolved issue in the field of T helper (Th) cell development relates to the findings that low doses of antigen promote Th2 cell development in vitro, whereas several classic in vivo studies suggest the opposite. Here we resolve this paradox by studying the early immune response in mice after infection with different doses of Leishmania major. We found that low parasite doses induced a Th2 response in C57BL/6 (B6) mice, whereas high doses induced a Th1 response. However, the Th2 response in low dose–infected mice was transient and the animals healed. The appearance of a Th1 response after low dose infection was dependent upon the concomitant activation of interferon γ–producing CD8+ T cells. In the absence of CD8+ T cells, the Th2 response was maintained. However, either neutralization of interleukin (IL)-4 or administration of IL-12 promoted a Th1 response after low dose infection of CD8-deficient mice, indicating that the required role for CD8+ T cells was limited to modulation of CD4+ T cell responses. Thus, the discrepant results seen between in vivo and in vitro studies on the effects of antigen dose on Th cell differentiation may depend upon whether CD8+ T cells participate in the immune response.
Variant Ionotropic Receptors Are Expressed in Olfactory Sensory Neurons of Coeloconic Sensilla on the Antenna of the Desert Locust (Schistocerca gregaria)

The behaviour of the desert locust, Schistocera gregaria, is largely directed by volatile olfactory cues. The relevant odorants are detected by specialized antennal sensory neurons which project their sensory dendrites into hair-like structures, the sensilla. Generally, the responsiveness of the antennal chemosensory cells is determined by specific receptors which may be either odorant receptors (ORs) or variant ionotropic receptors (IRs). Previously, we demonstrated that in locust the co-receptor for ORs (ORco) is only expressed in cells of sensilla basiconica and sensilla trichodea, suggesting that cells in sensilla coeloconica may express different types of chemosensory receptors. In this study, we have identified the genes of S. gregaria which encode homologues of co-receptors for the variant ionotropic receptors, the subtypes IR8a and IR25a. It was found that both subtypes, SgreIR8a and SgreIR25a, are expressed in the antennae of all five nymphal stages and in adults. Attempts to assign the relevant cell types by means of in situ hybridization revealed that SgreIR8a and SgreIR25a are expressed in cells of sensilla coeloconica. Double fluorescence in situ hybridization experiments disclosed that the two IR-subtypes are co-expressed in some cells of this sensillum type. Expression of SgreIR25a was also found in some of the sensilla chaetica, however, neither SgreIR25a nor SgreIR8a was found to be expressed in sensilla basiconica and sensilla trichodea. This observation was substantiated by the results of double FISH experiments demonstrating that cells expressing SgreIR8a or SgreIR25a do not express ORco. These results support the notion that the antenna of the desert locust employs two different populations of OSNs to sense odors; cells which express IRs in sensilla coeloconica and cells which express ORs in sensilla basiconica and sensilla trichodea.
Evidence for an actin-containing cytoplasmic precursor of the focal contact and the timing of incorporation of vinculin at the focal contact

The distribution of F-actin and vinculin in chicken embryo fibroblasts has been examined by nitrobenzoxadiazol (NBD)-phallacidin and indirect immunofluorescent staining, respectively, and related to the process of focal contact formation by recording the motility of the cell with differential interference contrast (DIC) or interference reflection microscopy (IRM) before fixation for staining. Linear cytoplasmic precursors of the focal contact, present within unattached lamellipodia, stained intensely with NBD-phallacidin. Without exception new focal contacts, 8 s and older at fixation, were associated with either a longer F-actin rib in the lamellipodium or, in older contacts, an F-actin structure of similar dimensions to the contact. This change in distribution of F-actin over the new contacts was accounted for by the segregation of the structural precursor into an attached part over the focal contact and a separate motile part. These results show that F- actin accumulates in the precursor adjacent to areas of the membrane competent to form the focal contact, and are consistent with the interpretation that this F-actin contributes to the initial adhesion plaque associated with the new contact. Vinculin was essentially absent from motile lamellipodia, showed no preferential association with F- actin rich precursors or very young focal contacts, but accumulated over new contacts during a 90-s period. Therefore, the association of F- actin with the membrane that precedes and persists in the initial focal contact is independent of vinculin, and the role of vinculin in development of the focal contact remains unclear.
Channel Bonding in Short-Range WLANs

Channel bonding is one of the strategies considered in the IEEE 802.11ac amendment to improve the performance of Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs). However, besides the obvious gains attainable from using wider channels in terms of higher achievable transmission rates, there are also several potential drawbacks that may seriously compromise the overall WLAN performance, most notably the higher probability to suffer from external interference. The goal of this paper is to assess the suitability of channel bonding for enhancing the performance of short-range WLANs, which are highly susceptible to external interference. We analytically model and evaluate the performance of the two channel access schemes proposed for the IEEE 802.11ac amendment that enable the use of channel bonding. The results show that for short-range WLANs, the use of channel bonding is able to provide a significant performance boost when the presence of external interference is low to moderate, specially if the dynamic bandwidth channel access scheme is enabled.
Flexible Dynamic Block Adaptive Quantization for Sentinel-1 SAR Missions

The letter introduces a novel quantizer suited for medium to high-resolution synthetic aperture radar (SAR) systems, like the forthcoming SENTINEL-1 SAR. The Flexible Dynamic Block Adaptive Quantization (FDBAQ) extends the concept of the Block Adaptive Quantization (BAQ), used in spaceborne SAR since the Magellan mission, by adaptively tuning the quantizer rate according to the local signal-to-noise-ratio (SNR). A design is presented aiming to optimize the average bit-rate, while constraining the minimum SNR. FDBAQ optimized performance is then evaluated using backscatter maps derived from ENVIronment SATellite (ENVISAT) data.
Flexible distributed systems for multimedia applications

This paper discusses how to make a distributed object system flexible so as to satisfy applications' requirements when changing the system environment. The system change is modeled to be the change of not only types of service but also quality of service (QoS) supported by the objects. There are two types of methods changing the objects, one for manipulating the states of the objects and another for changing QoS of the objects. We discuss new relations among methods with respect to QoS. By using the QoS-based relations, we newly discuss a QoS-based compensating way to recover the object from the less qualified state.
whiteLAN

To build large and scalable setups, researchers usually employ mixed testbeds of regular SDR devices and cheaper, generally less flexible COTS devices. Such hybrid setups often face uncontrollable interference from other users in the ISM bands, which leads to incomparable results and requires frequent repetitions of experiments. Maintaining the ability to use COTS devices and ISM band-only SDR devices while moving experiments to less crowded frequency bands is thus of high interest to practical wireless communications research. In this paper we present whiteLAN, a frequency converter that enables IEEE 802.11b/g devices to operate over UHF frequencies. We discuss the advantages of a ISM-UHF converter setup, present the hardware architecture of our solution, and provide key performance metrics of the physical implementation. Through a comparative study of ISM vs. UHF operations we show that whiteLAN is viable for use as a plug-and-play extension for wireless research deployments.
Inhibition of Interferon Induction and Action by the Nairovirus Nairobi Sheep Disease Virus/Ganjam Virus

The Nairoviruses are an important group of tick-borne viruses that includes pathogens of man (Crimean Congo hemorrhagic fever virus) and livestock animals (Dugbe virus, Nairobi sheep disease virus (NSDV)). NSDV is found in large parts of East Africa and the Indian subcontinent (where it is known as Ganjam virus). We have investigated the ability of NSDV to antagonise the induction and actions of interferon. Both pathogenic and apathogenic isolates could actively inhibit the induction of type 1 interferon, and also blocked the signalling pathways of both type 1 and type 2 interferons. Using transient expression of viral proteins or sections of viral proteins, these activities all mapped to the ovarian tumour-like protease domain (OTU) found in the viral RNA polymerase. Virus infection, or expression of this OTU domain in transfected cells, led to a great reduction in the incorporation of ubiquitin or ISG15 protein into host cell proteins. Point mutations in the OTU that inhibited the protease activity also prevented it from antagonising interferon induction and action. Interestingly, a mutation at a peripheral site, which had little apparent effect on the ability of the OTU to inhibit ubiquitination and ISG15ylation, removed the ability of the OTU to block the induction of type 1 and the action of type 2 interferons, but had a lesser effect on the ability to block type 1 interferon action, suggesting that targets other than ubiquitin and ISG15 may be involved in the actions of the viral OTU.
An energy-efficient network implemented with Junos SDK

Nowadays, although the performance of network devices has improved a lot, they consume more and more energy. Therefore, network energy efficiency is increasingly important in this era. In this paper, a software approach to energy-efficient networks is proposed and an application, which can make mid-scale networks energy efficient is demonstrated. In the proposed approach, some idle network interfaces of routers are disabled when the network load is low. Traffic flow converges on certain network paths, as disabled interfaces make some paths unavailable. When network load gets high, disabled interfaces can be re-enabled to ease the traffic pressure and network traffic disperses to different paths. A dynamic routing protocol is configured in order to keep connectivity when the topology changes. This approach is realized by an application, which is developed using Juniper Junos Software Development Kit (Junos SDK) and operates on Juniper programmable routers. Multiple entities of the application operating on different routers in the network form a distributed system. With regards to functionality, the application senses network traffic load; communicates among entities on other routers; determines and executes interface disabling and enabling. A virtual network built by Juniper virtual network simulator is used to test this application. Results reveal that a reasonable amount of energy can be saved by disabling idle interfaces while maintaining the connectivity.
Social Europe and Experimentalist Governance : Towards a New Constitutional Compromise?

This paper examines the normative, empirical, and constitutional debates surrounding the use of the Open Method of Coordination (OMC) in European social policy. The OMC is an experimentalist approach to European Union governance, based on benchmarking national progress towards European objectives and organized mutual learning. Its potential benefits include reconciling the pursuit of common European concerns with respect for legitimate national diversity, and encouraging cross-national learning through comparison of different approaches to similar problems across the EU's 25 Member States. The paper responds to three critical questions concerning the OMC’s legitimacy (its relation to subsidiarity, the ‘Community Method’, and democracy), before going on to assess the findings of recent empirical research on its effectiveness in terms of policy change, governance, and mutual learning. I argue that both the democratic legitimacy and the practical effectiveness of existing OMC processes could be improved by reflexively applying to its own procedures key elements of the method itself, such as benchmarking, peer review, monitoring, and iterative redesign. The paper concludes by reviewing the debate over the incorporation of the OMC into the new Constitution, and considering its implications for the future of experimentalist governance in the EU.
WFPC2 Observations of Compact Star Cluster Nuclei in Low-Luminosity Spiral Galaxies

We have used the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) aboard the Hubble Space Telescope to obtain F450W and F814W (B- and I-band) observations of the compact star cluster nuclei of the nearby, late-type, low-luminosity spiral galaxies NGC 4395, NGC 4242, and ESO 359-029. In addition, we analyze archival WFPC2 observations of the compact star cluster nucleus of M33. All of these galaxies are structurally diffuse, with moderately low surface brightnesses and little or no discernible bulge component. Here we present a comparative analysis of the structural and photometric properties of their nuclei. NGC 4395 contains a Seyfert 1 nucleus; M33 has some signatures of weak nuclear activity; the other two galaxies are not known to be active. All of the nuclei have MI ∼ -11; hence these represent a little explored low-luminosity extension of the galactic nuclear activity sequence in a class of host galaxy not traditionally associated with galactic nuclear phenomena. These kinds of compact nuclei appear to be quite common in low luminosity, late-type spirals. Our Planetary Camera 2 images partially resolve the nuclei of all four galaxies. A simple model consisting of an isothermal sphere plus a point source provides a good model for the observed radial intensity distribution in all cases and permits an exploration of the underlying nuclear structures and spatial scales. Despite their low luminosities, all of the nuclei are very compact. In all cases the luminosity densities are increasing at small radii to the resolution limit of our data. In spite of having similar size scales and luminosities, the nuclei in our sample span a wide range of B-I color. This may be a signature of different evolutionary phases. The M33 nucleus exhibits complex structure; its isophotes are elongated, and it has a possible jetlike component. The Seyfert nucleus of NGC 4395 has an extremely blue color (B-I = -0.16) and is the most structurally complex nucleus in our sample. Circularly symmetric fits to its underlying structure reveal a distinct bipolar pattern. A pair of bright filaments located on one side of the nucleus are probably due to [O III] emission from gas within a nuclear ionization cone. NGC 4395 appears to contain an underlying normal star cluster nucleus that is hosting activity. NGC 4242 shows evidence of a slightly elongated, bar-shaped feature at its center. The ESO 359-029 nucleus appears relatively symmetric and featureless at the resolution limit of our data, but it is clearly very compact. The circumnuclear environments of all four of our program galaxies are extremely diffuse, have only low to moderate star formation, and appear to be devoid of large quantities of dust. The central gravitational potentials of the galaxies are also quite shallow, making the origin of these types of "naked" nuclei problematic.
A faster image registration and stitching algorithm

This paper presents a new algorithm for Image Registration and Stitching. The algorithm is designed to be extremely efficient and fast in its execution and is intended for use in stitching images extracted from a video stream of a camera. This algorithm is not universally applicable to all the image registration and stitching problems. It is customized to be used to generate single images of surfaces such as a conveyor belt or undercarriage of vehicles, which cannot be captured by a single photo. The algorithm works by extracting edges of the two images to be registered. Then it selects a reference section from the first image and search in the second image where it finds the best match for that section. The best match is the east difference score. The section in the second image which gives the least difference score is then identified as the registration point between the two images. The speed of the algorithm is improved by using heuristics to restrict the search space in the second image. We present full details of how the extraction of the heuristic is done from the inputs and how it drastically reduces the execution time of the algorithm. The paper also contains a full section on comparing our algorithm with a set of existing algorithms. Our algorithm outperforms the existing ones for all the common image sizes.
Design and Implementation of a High-Performance PMLSM Drives Using DSP Chip

This paper presents a digital signal processor (DSP)-based high-performance controller for use in permanent magnet linear synchronous motor (PMLSM) drives. The PMLSM is mathematically modeled and the vector control scheme is used in the current loop of a PMLSM drive. Then, to increase the drive's performance, an adaptive fuzzy controller constructed by a fuzzy basis function and a parameter-adjustable mechanism is derived and applied to the position loop of the PMLSM drive to cope with the dynamic uncertainty and external load effect. Finally, a TMS320F2812 DSP chip produced by Texas Instruments is employed to implement the controller. The new-generation TMS320F2812 exhibits fast computation (150 MIPS) and a completely integrated motor peripheral circuit. Therefore, a fully digital controller for PMLSM drives, in which the current vector control scheme, space vector pulse width modulation generation, A/D conversion, coordinate transformation, quadrature encoder pulse detection, adaptive fuzzy controller, and point-to-point motion controller can be realized within a single DSP chip. An experimental system is established using a PMLSM, a DSP control board, an inverter, a rectifier, and other elements to verify the effectiveness of the proposed high-performance control system. Some experimental results are confirmed theoretically.
Blood Money, New Money and the Moral Economy of Tort Law in Action

This manuscript reports the results of a qualitative study of personal injury lawyers in Connecticut. Building on the results of an earlier study of lawyers in Florida (Transforming Punishment Into Compensation: In the Shadow of Punitive Damages, 1998 WIS. L. REV. 211), the study describes and explores the implications of professional norms and practices that govern tort settlement behavior. In particular, the study explores the moral and practical barriers to collecting "blood money" (money from individual defendants, as opposed to liability insurance companies), as well as the moral and practical explanations for victims' apparent ability to partially trump the claims of subrogating workers compensation and health insurance carriers. The results pose a challenge to the conventional understanding that tort law in action is a simpler, more streamlined version of tort law on the books. In addition, the results suggest that compensation and retribution concerns figure far more prominently in tort law in action than the deterrence concerns emphasized in much of the theoretical and doctrinal literature.
Reheating the Universe after string theory inflation

In string theory realizations of inflation, the endpoint of inflation is often brane-antibrane annihilation. We consider the processes of reheating of the standard model universe after brane inflation. We identify the channels of inflaton energy decay, cascading from tachyon annihilation through massive closed string loops, KK modes, and brane displacement moduli to the lighter standard model particles. Cosmological data constrains scenarios by putting stringent limits on the fraction of reheating energy deposited in gravitons and nonstandard sector massive relics. We estimate the energy deposited into various light degrees of freedom in the open and closed string sectors, the timing of reheating, and the reheating temperature. Production of gravitons is significantly suppressed in warped inflation. However, we predict a residual gravitational radiation background at the level ${\ensuremath{\Omega}}_{\mathrm{GW}}\ensuremath{\sim}{10}^{\ensuremath{-}8}$ of the present cosmological energy density. We also extend our analysis to multiple throat scenarios. A viable reheating would be possible in a single throat or in a certain subclass of multiple throat scenarios of the KKLMMT type inflation model, but overproduction of massive Kaluza-Klein (KK) modes poses a serious problem. The problem is quite severe if some inner manifold comes with approximate isometries (angular KK modes) or if there exists a throat of modest length other than the standard model throat, possibly associated with some hidden sector (low-lying KK modes).
Insulin Blocks Glutamate-Induced Neurotoxicity in Differentiated SH-SY5Y Neuronal Cells

Insulin is a cytokine which promotes cell growth. Recently, a few published reports on insulin in different cell lines support the antiapoptotic effect of insulin. But the reports fail to explain the role of insulin in modulating glutamate-mediated neuronal cell death through excitotoxicity. Thus, we examined the neuroprotective effect of insulin on glutamate-induced toxicity on differentiated SH-SY5Y neuronal cells. Changes in cell viability were measured by 3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2,5-diphenyl-tetrazolium bromide (MTT) based assay, while apoptotic damage was detected by acridine orange/ethidium bromide and Hoechst staining. Intracellular reactive oxygen species (ROS) accumulation and morphological alterations were also measured. Treatment with glutamate induced apoptosis, elevated ROS levels and caused damage to neurons. Insulin was able to attenuate the glutamate-induced excitotoxic damage to neuronal cells.
Real Exchange Rates in the Long Run: Evidence from Historical Data

We present empirical evidence on the forces driving real exchange rates in the longrun. Using data from three industrialised countries, we find support for the hypothesis that productivity and fiscalshocks matter. There is also evidence, however, that the impact of fiscal shocks only matters in the short and medium-run. In some cases fiscal shocks cause depreciations, and this is probably explained by the monetary accomodation of fiscal shocks. The traditional Harrod-Balassa-Samuelson effect of productivity on real exchange rates is also found to be reversed in some cases, which demonstrates the importance of the distributive sector in driving productivity gains.
Noise Clustering Algorithm based on Kernel Method

Based on a distance of kernel method, a novel noise-resistant fuzzy clustering algorithm called kernel noise clustering (KNC) algorithm, is proposed. KNC is an extension of the noise clustering (NC) algorithm proposed by Davé. By replacing the Euclidean distance used in the objective function of NC algorithm, a new distance is introduced in NC algorithm. The distance of the kernel method is more robust than Euclidean and alternative distance. Moreover, The properties of the new algorithm illustrated that the KNC are most suitable and effective method for clusters with non-spherical shapes such as annular ring shape. In addition, KNC is a better method to solve the problems annular ring shape with noise than the FKCM is.