Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Key Features of Gamma-Delta T-Cell Subsets in Human Diseases and Their Immunotherapeutic Implications

The unique features of gamma-delta (γδ) T cells, related to their antigen recognition capacity, their tissue tropism, and their cytotoxic function, make these cells ideal candidates that could be targeted to induce durable immunity in the context of different pathologies. In this review, we focus on the main characteristics of human γδ T-cell subsets in diseases and the key mechanisms that could be explored to target these cells.
Ordered arrays of faceted gold nanoparticles obtained by dewetting and nanosphere lithography

Nanoparticle arrays have potential applications in many areas, such as optics and electronics. Earlier work is mostly concentrated on the synthesis of such arrays, whereas we would like to focus on the control of particle size and shape, which has a great influence on the particle properties. In this study three different types of arrays of faceted nanoparticles were synthesized; it is shown that the particle size and shape in such arrays can be modified by the annealing treatment. By taking advantage of this, a novel method for the production of lines of faceted particles was demonstrated. These structures have potential applications as plasmon waveguides.
PAPR reduction of OFDM signals using a reduced complexity PTS technique

A major drawback of orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) is the high peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR) of the transmitted signal. Partial transmit sequence (PTS) technique can improve the PAPR statistics of OFDM signals. In the PTS technique, the data block to be transmitted is partitioned into disjoint subblocks and the subblocks are combined using phase factors to minimize PAPR. As ordinary PTS technique requires an exhaustive search over all combinations of allowed phase factors, the search complexity increases exponentially with the number of subblocks. In the proposed technique, a gradient descent search is performed to find the phase factors. It is shown that the proposed technique achieves significant reduction in search complexity with little performance degradation.
A novel cholinergic "slow effect" of efferent stimulation on cochlear potentials in the guinea pig

This report documents slow changes in cochlear responses produced by electrical stimulation of the olivocochlear bundle (OCB), which provides efferent innervation to the hair cells of the cochlea. These slow changes have time constants of 25–50 sec, three orders of magnitude slower than those reported previously. Such “slow effects” are similar to classically described “fast effects” in that (1) they comprise a suppression of the compound action potential (CAP) of the auditory nerve mirrored by an enhancement of the cochlear microphonic potential (CM) generated largely by the outer hair cells; (2) the magnitude of suppression decreases as the intensity of the acoustic stimulus increases; (3) they share the same dependence on OCB stimulation rate; (4) both are extinguished upon cutting the OCB; and (5) both are blocked with similar concentrations of a variety of cholinergic antagonists as well as with strychnine and bicuculline. These observations suggest that both fast and slow effects are mediated by the same receptor and are produced by conductance changes in outer hair cells. Slow effects differ from fast effects in that (1) fast effects are greatest for acoustic stimulus frequencies between 6 and 10 kHz, whereas slow effects peak for frequencies from 12 to 16 kHz, and (2) fast effects persist over long periods of OCB stimulation, whereas slow effects diminish after 60 sec of stimulation. The time course of the slow effects can be described mathematically by assuming that each shock-burst produces, in addition to a fast effect, a small decrease in CAP amplitude that decays exponentially with a time constant that is long relative to the intershock interval. The long time constant of the slow effect compared to the fast effect suggests that it may arise from a distinct intracellular mechanism, possibly mediated by second- messenger systems.
Inciting the metric oriented humanist: Teaching bibliometrics in a faculty of humanities

In the past few decades the core of bibliometrics has predominantly been ‘scientometric’ in nature, due to the first commercial citation index having been created for scientific journals and articles. The production of citation indexes for books implies that proper education related to their use is now becoming critical. A new breed of humanistic bibliometrician can emerge successfully if well-trained lecturers are prepared to provide students with a foundation in mathematical indicator construction and a stimulating environment dedicated to problem-oriented learning. We examine some of the key principles and practices associated with teaching bibliometrics to humanists, with the aim of encouraging students to reflect upon new indicators relevant to scholarly research outputs across the humanities. Emphasis is placed on the “biblio” in bibliometrics (i.e., books), digital record-keeping across the humanities, the work of humanists who have sought to explain the development of new knowledge through objective pattern-seeking, and the complementary value of alternative versus traditional indicators of scholarly research performance.
Different quantum f-divergences and the reversibility of quantum operations

The concept of classical $f$-divergences gives a unified framework to construct and study measures of dissimilarity of probability distributions; special cases include the relative entropy and the Renyi divergences. Various quantum versions of this concept, and more narrowly, the concept of Renyi divergences, have been introduced in the literature with applications in quantum information theory; most notably Petz' quasi-entropies (standard $f$-divergences), Matsumoto's maximal $f$-divergences, measured $f$-divergences, and sandwiched and $\alpha$-$z$-Renyi divergences. In this paper we give a systematic overview of the various concepts of quantum $f$-divergences with a main focus on their monotonicity under quantum operations, and the implications of the preservation of a quantum $f$-divergence by a quantum operation. In particular, we compare the standard and the maximal $f$-divergences regarding their ability to detect the reversibility of quantum operations. We also show that these two quantum $f$-divergences are strictly different for non-commuting operators unless $f$ is a polynomial, and obtain some analogous partial results for the relation between the measured and the standard $f$-divergences. We also study the monotonicity of the $\alpha$-$z$-Renyi divergences under the special class of bistochastic maps that leave one of the arguments of the Renyi divergence invariant, and determine domains of the parameters $\alpha,z$ where monotonicity holds, and where the preservation of the $\alpha$-$z$-Renyi divergence implies the reversibility of the quantum operation.
Bidirectional regulation of osteoclast function by nitric oxide synthase isoforms.

Nitric oxide (NO) produces rapid osteoclast detachment and contraction in vitro, and this effect is accompanied by a profound inhibition of bone resorption. Work by others has confirmed these findings in vivo: inhibition of NO synthase [NOS; L-arginine, NADPH: oxygen oxidoreductase (NO-forming), EC 1.14. 13.39] in normal rats is followed by increased bone resorption reflected by a marked loss in bone mineral density. In our present study, immunocytochemistry and Northern blotting show the presence of the constitutive calcium-sensitive NOS isoform (cNOS) in normal rat osteoclasts and in the human preosteoclast cell line (FLG 29.1). The inducible NOS isoform (iNOS) was also clearly demonstrable in the rat cells especially after treatment with gamma interferon (IFN-gamma) and bacterial wall products [lipopolysaccharide (LPS)], while a basal level of transcript was detected in the untreated human preosteoclast line. However NADPH-diaphorase activity was intense only in neonatal rat osteoclasts attached to bone, perhaps reflecting either enhancement of cNOS activity by calcium or increased amounts of the inducible isoform in activated osteoclasts in situ compared with isolated neonatal rat osteoclasts. These actively resorb devitalized bone but the untreated cells contain relatively low levels of NOS; they are extremely sensitive to inhibition by NO. The iNOS inhibitor aminoguanidine markedly enhances in vitro resorption by activated NOS-rich chick osteoclasts and by normal rat osteoclasts treated with LPS or IFN-gamma. In contrast, the nonselective NOS inhibitor NG-monomethyl-L-arginine inhibits resorption by untreated neonatal rat osteoclasts. Thus, osteoclast function may require intermittent calcium-stimulated increases in NO production by cNOS against a basal inhibitory background activity of the iNOS isoform. However, bone resorption depends on precursor replication and on the activity of the mature cells, and we found that the NO donor 3-morpholinosydnonimine (SIN-1) (50 microM) profoundly depressed replication in the human preosteoclast line. Taken together, these results strongly suggest that NO maintains a central control of bone resorption in both avian and mammalian species by exerting a powerful tonic restraint of osteoclast numbers and activity. The presence of NOS in human cells implies a similar function in man and that conventional views of calcium homoeostasis and skeletal metabolism will need substantial revision. Since NO also influences behavior of the osteoblast, the bone-forming cell, in vitro, a similar effect in vivo might imply a general influence on bone remodeling.
Mapping Loops of multimedia algorithms for Coarse-grained reconfigurable architectures

Coarse-Grained Reconfigurable Architectures (CGRAs) are widely used as coprocessors to accelerate data-intensive applications. However, the parallelization of sequential programs and the optimization of critical loops are still challenging issues, since the access delay introduced by the massive memory accesses contained in those loops has become the bottleneck of CGRA's performance. In this paper we focus on the parallel optimization of applications by considering the critical loops mapping under the CGRA's resource constraints. We first propose a novel approach to parallelize loops by multi-level tilling. Then a genetic algorithm is introduced to schedule tiled loops with memory-aware object functions. Data locality and communication cost are optimized during the parallel processing as well. Experimental results show that our approach can generate more effective parallel tasks to improve the data locality and load-balanced execution, while obtains 9.6% better speedup compared with the memory-unaware parallel processing.
Genes and environment in refractive error: the twin eye study.

PURPOSE A classical twin study was performed to examine the relative importance of genes and environment in refractive error. METHODS Refractive error was examined in 226 monozygotic (MZ) and 280 dizygotic (DZ) twin pairs aged 49 to 79 years (mean age, 62.4 years). Using a Humphrey-670 automatic refractor, continuous measures of spherical equivalent, total astigmatism, and corneal astigmatism were recorded. Univariate and bivariate maximum likelihood model fitting was used to estimate genetic and environmental variance components using information from both eyes. RESULTS For the continuous spectrum of myopia/hyperopia, a model specifying additive genetic and unique environmental factors showed the best fit to the data, yielding a heritability of 84% to 86% (95% confidence interval [CI], 81%-89%). If myopia and hyperopia (< or = -0.5 D and > or = 0.5 D, respectively) were treated as binary traits, the heritability was 90% (95% CI, 81%-95%) for myopia and 89% (95% CI, 81%-94%) for hyperopia. For total and corneal astigmatism, modeling showed dominant genetic effects are important; dominant genetic effects accounted for 47% to 49% of the variance of total astigmatism (95% CI, 37%-55%) and 42% to 61% of corneal astigmatism variance (95% CI, 8%-71%), with additive genetic factors accounting for 1% to 4% and 4% to 18%, respectively (95% CIs, 0%-13% and 0%-60%, respectively). CONCLUSIONS Genetic effects are of major importance in myopia/hyperopia; astigmatism appears to be dominantly inherited.
Pyogenic liver abscess in the elderly: clinical features, outcomes and prognostic factors.

BACKGROUND pyogenic liver abscess (PLA) is a potentially life-threatening disease in middle-to-old aged persons. OBJECTIVE to compare the differences in clinical features and outcomes between older and younger PLA patients, and to identify predictors of outcomes in older patients. DESIGN retrospective chart review of all PLA patients between July 1999 and June 2007. SETTING a 1,600-bed primary and tertiary care centre. SUBJECTS in total, 339 patients were enrolled and included 118 > or =65 years of age (the elderly group) and 221 patients <65 years of age (the non-elderly group). METHODS clinical features, laboratory, imaging and microbiologic findings, treatment and outcomes for each of the included patients were collected. The predictor of outcome was determined using logistic regression and purposeful selection of covariates. RESULTS the elderly group had a higher APACHE II score on admission, a biliary abnormality, a malignancy, a pleural effusion, polymicrobial, anaerobic or multi-drug-resistant isolates, inappropriate initial antibiotics, a longer hospitalisation and a longer parenteral antibiotic treatment period than the non-elderly group, whereas the non-elderly group was more likely to be alcoholic men with cryptogenic origin of abscess and Klebsiella pneumoniae infection. There was no difference in case fatality between the elderly (13.6%) and non-elderly (8.6%) groups despite the elderly group having a poorer host status on admission. In multivariate analysis, age (P = 0.028) and APACHE II score at admission > or =15 (P = 0.001) were risk factors, but K. pneumoniae infection (P = 0.012) was a protective factor for fatality in older PLA patients. CONCLUSIONS these data suggest that older PLA patients would have a fair outcome compared to younger patients, but require longer hospitalisations.
Energy-aware topology design for wireless body area networks

Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs) represent one of the most promising approaches for improving the quality of life, allowing remote patient monitoring and other healthcare applications. In such networks, traffic routing plays an important role together with the positioning of relay nodes, which collect the information from biosensors and send it towards the sinks. This work investigates the optimal design of wireless body area networks by studying the joint data routing and relay positioning problem in a WBAN, in order to increase the network lifetime. To this end, we propose an integer linear programming model which optimizes the number and location of relays to be deployed and the data routing towards the sinks, minimizing both the network installation cost and the energy consumed by wireless sensors and relays. We solve the proposed model in realistic WBAN scenarios, and discuss the effect of different parameters on the characteristics of the planned networks. Numerical results demonstrate that our model can design energy-efficient and cost-effective wireless body area networks in a very short computing time, thus representing an interesting framework for the WBAN planning problem.
Evaluation of Etest Method for Determining Fluconazole and Voriconazole MICs for 279 Clinical Isolates of Candida Species Infrequently Isolated from Blood

ABSTRACT The performance of Etest in fluconazole and voriconazole testing of 279 isolates of uncommon Candida spp. was assessed in comparison with the National Committee for Clinical Laboratory Standards (NCCLS)-approved standard broth microdilution (BMD) method. The NCCLS method employed RPMI 1640 broth medium, and MICs were read after incubation for 48 h at 35°C. Etest MICs were determined with RPMI agar containing 2% glucose and were read after incubation for 48 h at 35°C. The isolates include Candida krusei, C. lusitaniae, C. guilliermondii, C. kefyr, C. rugosa, C. lipolytica, C. pelliculosa, C. dubliniensis, C. famata, C. zeylanoides, C. inconspicua, and C. norvegensis. Overall agreement between Etest and BMD MICs was 96% for fluconazole and 95% for voriconazole. Where a discrepancy was observed between Etest and the reference method, the Etest tended to give lower values with both fluconazole and voriconazole. The Etest method using RPMI agar appears to be a useful method for determining fluconazole and voriconazole susceptibilities of uncommon species of Candida.
Bifurcation dynamics of natural drainage networks

As water erodes a landscape, streams form and channellize the surficial flow. In time, streams become highly ramified networks that can extend over a continent. Here, we combine physical reasoning, mathematical analysis and field observations to understand a basic feature of network growth: the bifurcation of a growing stream. We suggest a deterministic bifurcation rule arising from a relationship between the position of the tip in the network and the local shape of the water table. Next, we show that, when a stream bifurcates, competition between the stream and branches selects a special bifurcation angle α=2π/5. We confirm this prediction by measuring several thousand bifurcation angles in a kilometre-scale network fed by groundwater. In addition to providing insight into the growth of river networks, this result presents river networks as a physical manifestation of a classical mathematical problem: interface growth in a harmonic field. In the final sections, we combine these results to develop and explore a one-parameter model of network growth. The model predicts the development of logarithmic spirals. We find similar features in the kilometre-scale network.
Hopping conduction in amorphous solids

Abstract The hopping conduction process is examined under conditions of high temperatures, high fields and a non-uniform distribution of hopping sites. It is shown that the field dependence of the Mott T −¼ law can yield information about the trap density distribution. A new mechanism of conduction, considering the emission of charge carriers from donor centres into traps, is examined and shown to yield a characteristic of ln σ∞T −1/7. The electrical properties of amorphous carbon and germanium are examined. It is shown that carbon exhibits a pure hopping process whilst germanium shows the characteristics of donor emission into traps.
The Early Activation Marker CD69 Regulates the Expression of Chemokines and CD4 T Cell Accumulation in Intestine

Migration of naïve and activated lymphocytes is regulated by the expression of various molecules such as chemokine receptors and ligands. CD69, the early activation marker of C-type lectin domain family, is also shown to regulate the lymphocyte migration by affecting their egress from the thymus and secondary lymphoid organs. Here, we aimed to investigate the role of CD69 in accumulation of CD4 T cells in intestine using murine models of inflammatory bowel disease. We found that genetic deletion of CD69 in mice increases the expression of the chemokines CCL-1, CXCL-10 and CCL-19 in CD4+ T cells and/or CD4− cells. Efficient in vitro migration of CD69-deficient CD4 T cells toward the chemokine stimuli was the result of increased expression and/or affinity of chemokine receptors. In vivo CD69−/− CD4 T cells accumulate in the intestine in higher numbers than B6 CD4 T cells as observed in competitive homing assay, dextran sodium sulphate (DSS)-induced colitis and antigen-specific transfer colitis. In DSS colitis CD69−/− CD4 T cell accumulation in colonic lamina propria (cLP) was associated with increased expression of CCL-1, CXCL-10 and CCL-19 genes. Furthermore, treatment of DSS-administrated CD69−/− mice with the mixture of CCL-1, CXCL-10 and CCL-19 neutralizing Abs significantly decreased the histopathological signs of colitis. Transfer of OT-II×CD69−/− CD45RBhigh CD4 T cells into RAG−/− hosts induced CD4 T cell accumulation in cLP. This study showed CD69 as negative regulator of inflammatory responses in intestine as it decreases the expression of chemotactic receptors and ligands and reduces the accumulation of CD4 T cells in cLP during colitis.
Modeling and Supervisory Control of Railway Networks Using Petri Nets

In this paper, we deal with the problem of modeling railway networks with Petri nets so as to apply the theory of supervisory control for discrete event systems to automatically design the system controller. We provide a modular representation of railway networks in terms of stations and tracks including sensors and semaphores. We first ensure safeness and local liveness imposing both generalized mutual exclusion constraints and constraints also involving the firing vector. The detailed model used in this first step can be abstracted, considering a higher level description of a railway network that belongs to the class of ES PR (extended simple sequential process with resources) nets and show that global liveness may be enforced by adding appropriate monitor places designed using siphon analysis. In our approach, this can be done without an exhaustive computation of all siphons and we can characterize the cases in which the procedure can be recursively applied, giving a simple test for closed-loop net to remain an ES PR net.
CELL INTERACTIONS IN THE IMMUNE RESPONSE IN VITRO

The requirement for macrophages in thymus-dependent antibody responses was studied in vitro. Three different macrophage-deficient cell populations were studied: spleen cells passed through a glass bead column at 37°C, spleen cells cultured with specific antimacrophage serum, and thoracic duct lymphocytes. These cell populations from mice primed to dinitrophenylated (DNP) fowl gamma globulin were unable to respond to the homologous conjugate in vitro. DNP-reactive B cells were present in normal proportions, since all three macrophage-depleted populations responded normally to macrophage-independent and thymus-independent DNP flagella. Carrier-reactive T cells were present, as the helper capacity of carrier-primed spleen cells was the same as carrier-primed lymphocytes, and thoracic duct lymphocytes are a well-established source of helper cells. The inhibition of the cooperative response was thus due to removal of macrophages, and this was proven by restoration of thymus-dependent anti-DNP responses by small numbers of anti-θ-treated peritoneal exudate cells. These results suggest that macrophages are essential in cell collaboration, While their exact function in cell collaboration is not yet known, the above observation suggests that the mechanism of T-B collaboration involves the surface of macrophages.
A Comparison of the Fatigue Behavior of High Strength Cast Aluminum Alloys 201 and A357

Abstract : The notched fatigue strength of high strength aluminum casting alloys A357 and 201 was evaluated using separately cast round tensile bar coupons. These results are considered satisfactory for comparison purposes of the alloys, but should not be used for design criteria. The results are plotted in the form of S/N curves. The materials are also compared by ultimately failing the surviving fatigue specimens in tension and then by comparing microstructures of the test specimens exhibiting highest and lowest ultimate tensile strengths. The notched tensile strength of 201 was higher than A357; notched strength values of 201 specimens were reduced by partial eutectic melting and undissolved eutectic in grain boundary regions.