Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Redundant roles for inflammasome receptors NLRP3 and NLRC4 in host defense against Salmonella

Intracellular pathogens and endogenous danger signals in the cytosol engage NOD-like receptors (NLRs), which assemble inflammasome complexes to activate caspase-1 and promote the release of proinflammatory cytokines IL-1β and IL-18. However, the NLRs that respond to microbial pathogens in vivo are poorly defined. We show that the NLRs NLRP3 and NLRC4 both activate caspase-1 in response to Salmonella typhimurium. Responding to distinct bacterial triggers, NLRP3 and NLRC4 recruited ASC and caspase-1 into a single cytoplasmic focus, which served as the site of pro–IL-1β processing. Consistent with an important role for both NLRP3 and NLRC4 in innate immune defense against S. typhimurium, mice lacking both NLRs were markedly more susceptible to infection. These results reveal unexpected redundancy among NLRs in host defense against intracellular pathogens in vivo.
Análisis de respuestas abiertas en un cuestionario sobre conductas relacionadas con el SIDA

Resumen El objetivo de este trabajo es, por un lado, analizar y describir las respuestas que 402 alumnos de la Universidad de Huelva dan a una pregunta abierta—a través de análisis de textos—y, por otro, ver en quémedida estas respuestas se relacionan—por el método de las especificidades—con algunas características de los sujetos. Dichas características fueron determinadas a partir de sus respuestas en un cuestionario creado para medir conocimientos, actitudes, norma social percibida y control conductual percibido respecto a una conducta de prevención del SIDA: uso del condón. Los resultados del análisis de textos muestran cómo los sujetos justifican el no uso de condón en base a la estabilidad de sus relaciones sentimentales; además, los autores descubren que el cuestionario tiene efectos no previstos inicialmente por los investigadores sobre los sujetos estudiados: aporta nuevos concocimientos a los alumnos y les lleva a reflexionar sobre—e intentar cambiar—sus conductas de riesgo respecto al SIDA, entre otras consideraciones.
Review of epidemiological features, microbiological diagnosis and treatment outcome of microbial keratitis: Experience of over a decade

Purpose: To review the epidemiological characteristics, microbiological profile, and treatment outcome of patients with suspected microbial keratitis. Materials and Methods: Retrospective analysis of a non-comparative series from the database was done. All the patients presenting with corneal stromal infiltrate underwent standard microbiologic evaluation of their corneal scrapings, and smear and culture-guided antimicrobial therapy. Results: Out of 5897 suspected cases of microbial keratitis 3563 (60.4%) were culture-proven (bacterial – 1849, 51.9%; fungal – 1360, 38.2%; Acanthamoeba – 86, 2.4%; mixed – 268, 7.5%). Patients with agriculture-based activities were at 1.33 times (CI 1.16–1.51) greater risk of developing microbial keratitis and patients with ocular trauma were 5.33 times (CI 6.41–6.44) more likely to develop microbial keratitis. Potassium hydroxide with calcofluor white was most sensitive for detecting fungi (90.6%) and Acanthamoeba (84.0%) in corneal scrapings, however, Gram stain had a low sensitivity of 56.6% in detection of bacteria. Majority of the bacterial infections were caused by Staphylococcus epidermidis (42.3%) and Fusarium species (36.6%) was the leading cause of fungal infections. A significantly larger number of patients (691/1360, 50.8%) with fungal keratitis required surgical intervention compared to bacterial (799/1849, 43.2%) and Acanthamoeba (15/86, 17.4%) keratitis. Corneal healed scar was achieved in 75.5%, 64.8%, and 90.0% of patients with bacterial, fungal, and Acanthamoeba keratitis respectively. Conclusions: While diagnostic and treatment modalities are well in place the final outcome is suboptimal in fungal keratitis. With more effective treatment available for bacterial and Acanthamoeba keratitis, the treatment of fungal keratitis is truly a challenge.
Category specificity in mind and brain?

We summarise and respond to the main points made by the commentators on our target article, which concern: (1) whether structural similarity can play a causal role in normal object identification and in neuropsychological deficits for living things, (2) the nature of our structural knowledge of the world, (3) the relations between sensory and functional knowledge of objects, and the nature of our functional knowledge about living things, (4) whether we need to posit a “core” semantic system, (5) arguments that can be marshalled from evidence on functional imaging, (6) the causal mechanisms by which category differences can emerge in object representations, and (7) the nature of our knowledge about categories other than living and nonliving things. We also highlight points raised in our article that seem to be accepted.
From standardized data formats to standardized tools for optimization algorithm benchmarking

Benchmarking, the empirical algorithm performance comparison, is usually the only feasible way to find which algorithm is good for a given problem. Benchmarking consists of two steps: First, the algorithms are applied to the benchmarking problems and data is collected. Second, the collected data is evaluated. There is little guidance for the first and a lack of tool support for the second step. Researchers investigating new problems need to implement both data collection and evaluation. We make the case for defining standard directory structures and file formats for the performance data and metadata of experiments with optimization algorithms. Such formats must be easy to read, write, and to incorporate into existing setups. They would allow more general tools to emerge. Researchers then would no longer need to implement their own evaluation programs. We derive suitable formats by analyzing what existing tools do and what information they need. We present a general tool, the optimizationBenchmarking.org framework, including an open source library for reading and writing data in our format. Since our framework obtains its data from a general file format, it can assess the performance of arbitrary algorithms implemented in arbitrary programming languages on arbitrary single-objective optimization problems.
A Graphical Model for Recognizing Sung Melodies

A method is presented for automatic transcription of sung melodic fragments to score-like representation, including metric values and pitch. A joint model for pitch, rhythm, segmentation, and tempo is dened for a sung fragment. We then discuss the identication of the globally optimal musical transcription, given the observed audio data. A post process estimates the location of the tonic, so the transcription can be presented into they key of C. Experimental results are presented for a small test collection.
1,25-Dihydroxyvitamin D3 Suppresses TLR8 Expression and TLR8-Mediated Inflammatory Responses in Monocytes In Vitro and Experimental Autoimmune Encephalomyelitis In Vivo

1,25-Dihydroxyvitamin D3 (1,25(OH)2D3) suppresses autoimmunity and inflammation; however, the mechanism of its action has not been fully understood. We sought in this study to determine whether the anti-immune/anti-inflammatory action of 1,25(OH)2D3 is in part mediated through an interplay between 1,25(OH)2D3 and toll-like receptor (TLR)7/8 signaling. 1,25(OH)2D3 treatment prior to and/or following experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE) induction effectively reduced inflammatory cytokine expression in the spinal cord and ameliorated EAE. These effects were accompanied with a reduction in expression of several TLRs with the most profound effect observed for TLR8. The expression of TLR8 adaptor protein MyD88 was also significantly reduced by 1,25(OH)2D3. To determine the molecular mechanism by which 1,25(OH)2D3 suppresses EAE induction of TLR8 and inflammatory cytokine expression, we evaluated whether 1,25(OH)2D3 can directly inhibit TLR8 signaling and the resulting inflammatory responses in human THP-1 monocytes. 1,25(OH)2D3 treatment not only significantly reduced TLR8 expression but also the expression or activity of MyD88, IRF-4, IRF-7 and NF-kB in monocytes challenged with TLR8 ligands. TLR8 promoter-luciferase reporter assays indicated that 1,25(OH)2D3 decreases TLR8 mRNA level in part via inhibiting TLR8 gene transcription activity. As a result of inhibition on TLR8 signaling cascade at various stages, 1,25(OH)2D3 significantly diminished the TLR8 target gene expression (TNF-α and IL-1β). In summary, our novel findings suggest that TLR8 is a new target of 1,25(OH)2D3 and may mediate the anti-inflammatory action of 1,25(OH)2D3. Our findings also point to a destructive role of TLR8 in EAE and shed lights on pathogenesis of multiple sclerosis.
Cardinality Estimation: An Experimental Survey

Data preparation and data profiling comprise many both basic and complex tasks to analyze a dataset at hand and extract metadata, such as data distributions, key candidates, and functional dependencies. Among the most important types of metadata is the number of distinct values in a column, also known as the zeroth-frequency moment. Cardinality estimation itself has been an active research topic in the past decades due to its many applications. The aim of this paper is to review the literature of cardinality estimation and to present a detailed experimental study of twelve algorithms, scaling far beyond the original experiments. First, we outline and classify approaches to solve the problem of cardinality estimation - we describe their main idea, error-guarantees, advantages, and disadvantages. Our experimental survey then compares the performance all twelve cardinality estimation algorithms. We evaluate the algorithms' accuracy, runtime, and memory consumption using synthetic and real-world datasets. Our results show that different algorithms excel in different in categories, and we highlight their trade-offs.
Long-acting β2-agonists (LABA) in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease: efficacy and safety

COPD is characterized by progressive airflow obstruction which does not fully reverse to inhaled or oral pharmacotherapy. The management of patients with COPD has taken a totally new direction over the past 20 years, thank to the use of novel therapies aimed to improve and modify the natural history of COPD. Long-acting bronchodilators, including long-acting β2-agonists (LABAs), were introduced several years ago in order to enhance improvements in lung function, health status related quality of life, and reduce the rate of exacerbations. These effects can be boosted by the combination of LABAs with long-acting anticholinergic, and/or with inhaled corticosteroids. Inhaled LABAs are commonly well tolerated although adverse effects such as tremor and palpitations are occasionally troublesome.
Prudent Fraud Detection in Internet Banking

Most commercial Fraud Detection components of Internet banking systems use some kind of hybrid setup usually comprising a Rule-Base and an Artificial Neural Network. Such rule bases have been criticised for a lack of innovation in their approach to Knowledge Acquisition and maintenance. Furthermore, the systems are brittle; they have no way of knowing when a previously unseen set of fraud patterns is beyond their current knowledge. This limitation may have far reaching consequences in an online banking system. This paper presents a viable alternative to brittleness in Knowledge Based Systems; a potential milestone in the rapid detection of unique and novel fraud patterns in Internet banking. The experiments conducted with real online banking transaction log files suggest that Prudent based fraud detection may be a worthy alternative in online banking.
Justice and conflicts : theoretical and empirical contributions

The Normative Impact of Empirical Justice Research. - Advances in Justice Conflict Conceptualization: A New Integrative Framework. - Absence and Presence: Interpreting Moral Exclusion in the Jewish Museum Berlin. - On the Differentiation of an Implicit and a Self-Attributed Justice Motive. - About Is and Ought in Research on Belief in a Just World: The Janus-faced just-world motivation. - Justice Sensitivity as a Risk and Protective Factor in Social Conflicts. - Suspicions of Injustice: The Sense-making Function of Belief in Conspiracy Theories. - Justice in Performance Situations: Compromise between Equity and Equality. - Perceived Justice in the Division of Family Labor: Antecedents and Consequences. - Retributive Punishment in a Social Context. - Forming Fairness Judgments: Why People Favor Unfair Information. - Reactions to Organizational Injustice: Counter Work Behaviors and the Insider Threat. - Organizational Justice. - Justice as a Framework for the Solution of Environmental Conflicts. - Climate Change and Global Justice. - International Negotiations on Climate Change: Integrating Justice Psychology and Economics - a Way out of the Normative Blind Alley. - Justice and Environmental Decision Making. - Justice by Agreement: Constitutional Economics and its Cultural Challenge. - System Justification: A Motivational Process with Implications for Social Conflict. - Are the Media Capable of Fair Reporting? Remarks on the Principle of Fairness in Professional Journalism. - Social Identity and Justice in Violent Conflicts: A Dynamic Model of Intergroup Conflict. - Situation-Specific Forgiveness and Dispositional Forgiveness: A Lifespan Development Perspective. - Forgiveness in Close Interpersonal Relationships: A Negotiation Approach. - Moral Courage. - The Psychology of Deservingness and Acceptance of Human Rights.
Trellis code excited linear prediction (TCELP) speech coding

This paper describes using the trellis-based scalar-vector quantizer for sources with memory to solve the excitation codebook search problem of code excited linear prediction (CELP) speech coders. This approach leads to a 24 kbit/s telephony-bandwidth low-delay (3 msec) trellis CELP coder, which outperforms both ITU-T 15 kbit/s G.728 LD-CELP and G.726 32 kbit/s ADPCM. Since the codebook is derived from a scalar alphabet, the proposed coder can effectively handle excitation vectors in the 24-dimensional space (to realize considerable vector quantization gains) and has a computational complexity of approximately 75% of that of ITU-T G.728 LD-CELP.
Nexus#: A Distributed Hardware Task Manager for Task-Based Programming Models

In the era of multicore systems, it is expected that the number of cores that can be integrated on a single chip will be 3-digit. The key to utilize such a huge computational power is to extract the very fine parallelism in the user program. This is non-trivial for the average programmer, and becomes very hard as the number of potential parallel instances increases. Task-based programming models such as OmpSs are promising, since they handle the detection of dependencies and synchronization for the programmer. However, state-of-the-art research shows that task management is not cheap, and introduces a significant overhead that limits the scalability of OmpSs. Nexus# is a hardware accelerator for the OmpSs runtime system, which dynamically monitors dependencies between tasks. It is fully synthesizable in VHDL, and has a distributed task graph model to achieve the best scalability. Supporting tasks with arbitrary number of parameters and any dependency pattern, Nexus# achieves better performance than Nanos, the official OmpSs runtime system, and scales well for the H264dec benchmark with very fine grained tasks, among other benchmarks from the Starbench suite.
Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience Developmental Changes in Fact and Source Recall: Contributions from Executive Function and Brain Electrical Activity

Keywords: Source memory Episodic memory Memory retrieval EEG power Executive function Middle childhood a b s t r a c t Source memory involves recollecting the contextual details surrounding a memory episode. When source information is bound together, it makes a memory episodic in nature. Unfortunately , very little is known about the factors that contribute to its formation in early development. This study examined the development of source memory in middle childhood. Measures of executive function were examined as potential sources of variation in fact and source recall. Continuous electroencephalogram (EEG) measures were collected during baseline and fact and source retrieval in order to examine memory-related changes in EEG power. Six and 8-year-old children were taught 10 novel facts from two different sources and recall for fact and source information was later tested. Older children were better on fact recall, but both ages were comparable on source recall. However, source recall performance was poor at both ages, suggesting that this ability continues to develop beyond middle childhood. Regression analyses revealed that executive function uniquely predicted variance in source recall performance. Task-related increases in theta power were observed at frontal, temporal and parietal electrode sites during fact and source retrieval. This investigation contributes to our understanding of age-related differences in source memory processing in middle childhood.
A Multiple-Play Bandit Algorithm Applied to Recommender Systems

For several web tasks such as ad placement or e-commerce, recommender systems must recommend multiple items to their users-such problems can be modeled as bandits with multiple plays. State-of-the-art methods require running as many single-play bandit algorithms as there are items to recommend. On the contrary, some recent theoretical work in the machine learning literature designed new algorithms to address the multiple-play case directly. These algorithms were proved to have strong theoretical guarantees. In this paper we compare one such multiple-play algorithm with previous methods. We show on two real-world datasets that the multiple-play algorithm we use converges to equivalent values but learns about three times faster than state-of-the-art methods. We also show that carefully adapting these earlier methods can improve their performance.
Incentivizing crowdsourcing systems with network effects

In a crowdsourcing system, it is important for the crowdsourcer to engineer extrinsic rewards to incentivize the participants. With mobile social networking, a user enjoys an intrinsic benefit when she aligns her behavior with the behavior of others. Referred to as network effects, such an intrinsic benefit becomes more significant as the number of users grows in the crowdsourcing system. But should a crowdsourcer design her extrinsic rewards differently when such network effects are taken into account? In this paper, we, for the first time, consider network effects as a contributing factor to intrinsic rewards, and study its influence on the design of extrinsic rewards. Rather than assuming a fixed participant population, we show that the number of participating users evolves to a steady equilibrium, thanks to subtle interactions between intrinsic rewards due to network effects and extrinsic rewards offered by the crowdsourcer. Taken network effects into consideration, we design progressively more sophisticated extrinsic reward mechanisms, and propose new and optimal strategies for a crowdsourcer to obtain a higher utility. Via extensive simulations, we demonstrate that with our new strategies, a crowdsourcer is able to attract more participants with higher contributed efforts; and participants gain higher utilities from both intrinsic and extrinsic rewards.
Blind Detection of Region Duplication Forgery Using Fractal Coding and Feature Matching

Digital image forgery detection is important because of its wide use in applications such as medical diagnosis, legal investigations, and entertainment. Copy–move forgery is one of the famous techniques, which is used in region duplication. Many of the existing copy–move detection algorithms cannot effectively blind detect duplicated regions that are made by powerful image manipulation software like Photoshop. In this study, a new method is proposed for blind detecting manipulations in digital images based on modified fractal coding and feature vector matching. The proposed method not only detects typical copy–move forgery, but also finds multiple copied forgery regions for images that are subjected to rotation, scaling, reflection, and a mixture of these postprocessing operations. The proposed method is robust against tampered images undergoing attacks such as Gaussian blurring, contrast scaling, and brightness adjustment. The experimental results demonstrated the validity and efficiency of the method.
Endovascular treatment of dural sinus thrombosis with rheolytic thrombectomy and intra-arterial thrombolysis.

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Cerebral venous thrombosis is a rare entity that can be difficult to manage. Intrasinus thrombolysis is an increasingly applied intervention, but this modality carries an increased risk of hemorrhage. We describe for the first time an option with a potentially lower incidence of intracranial bleeding, the combination of the AngioJet rheolytic thrombectomy catheter with intra-arterial thrombolysis, in 2 patients with extensive dural sinus thromboses, preexisting intracranial hemorrhage, and severe progressive neurological deficits despite heparin therapy. METHODS Four procedures were performed in 2 patients with thromboses in the superior sagittal and transverse sinuses (right in 1 patient and bilateral in 1 patient) and cortical veins. Rheolytic thrombectomy was performed in the sigmoid, transverse, straight, and superior sagittal sinuses; this technique involves the use of the Bernoulli effect to create a vacuum that fragments and aspirates thrombus. For associated persistent cortical vein thromboses, low-dose intra-arterial thrombolysis was used. RESULTS Both patients had excellent angiographic results with sinus reopening after rheolytic thrombectomy and cortical vein reopening after intra-arterial thrombolysis. Follow-up CT showed no change in 1 patient and increased preexisting intracranial hemorrhage in the other. One patient had a negative hypercoagulable workup, and the other patient had probable anti-phospholipid antibody syndrome. At 6 months, both patients had excellent clinical outcome with no neurological deficits except mild short-term memory loss in 1 patient. CONCLUSIONS The combination of rheolytic thrombectomy with intra-arterial thrombolysis is a treatment modality that allows accelerated recanalization of occluded dural sinuses and cerebral veins with lower doses of thrombolytic agents.
Nimotuzumab Enhances the Radiosensitivity of Cancer Cells In Vitro by Inhibiting Radiation-Induced DNA Damage Repair

Background Nimotuzumab is a humanized IgG1 monoclonal antibody specifically targeting EGFR. In this study, we aimed to investigate the molecular mechanisms of nimotuzumab in its effects of enhancing cancer cell radiosensitivity. Principal Finding Lung cancer A549 cells and breast cancer MCF-7 cells were pretreated with or without nimotuzumab for 24 h before radiation to perform the clonogenic survival assay and to analyze the cell apoptosis by flow ctyometry. γ-H2AX foci were detected by confocal microscopy to assess the effect of nimotuzumab on radiation induced DNA repair. EGFR activation was examined and the levels of DNA damage repair related proteins in A549 cells at different time point and at varying doses exposure after nimotuzumab and radiation treatment were examined by Western blot. Pretreatment with nimotuzumab reduced clonogenic survival after radiation, inhibited radiation-induced EGFR activation and increased the radiation-induced apoptosis in both A549 cells and MCF-7 cells. The foci of γ-H2AX 24 h after radiation significantly increased in nimotuzumab pretreated cells with different doses. The phosphorylation of AKT and DNA-PKcs were remarkably inhibited in the combination group at each dose point as well as time point. Conclusions Our results revealed that the possible mechanism of nimotuzumab enhancing the cancer radiosensitivity is that nimotuzumab inhibited the radiation-induced activation of DNA-PKcs through blocking the PI3K/AKT pathway, which ultimately affected the DNA DSBs repair.