Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Extending the CD4+ T-Cell Epitope Specificity of the Th1 Immune Response to an Antigen Using aSalmonella enterica Serovar Typhimurium Delivery Vehicle

ABSTRACT We analyzed the CD4 T-cell immunodominance of the response to a model antigen (Ag), MalE, when delivered by an attenuated strain ofSalmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium (SL3261*pMalE). Compared to purified MalE Ag administered with adjuvant, the mapping of the peptide-specific proliferative responses showed qualitative differences when we used the Salmonella vehicle. We observed the disappearance of one out of eight MalE peptides' T-cell reactivity upon SL3261*pMalE immunization, but this phenomenon was probably due to a low level of T-cell priming, since it could be overcome by further immunization. The most striking effect of SL3261*pMalE administration was the activation and stimulation of new MalE peptide-specific T-cell responses that were silent after administration of purified Ag with adjuvant. Ag presentation assays performed with MalE-specific T-cell hybridomas showed that infection of Ag-presenting cells by this intracellular attenuated bacterium did not affect the processing and presentation of the different MalE peptides by major histocompatibility complex (MHC) class II molecules and therefore did not account for immunodominance modulation. Thus, immunodominance of the T-cell response to microorganisms is governed not only by the frequency of the available T-cell repertoire or the processing steps in Ag-presenting cells that lead to MHC presentation but also by other parameters probably related to the infectious process and to the bacterial products. Our results indicate that, upon infection by a microorganism, the specificity of the T-cell response induced against its Ags can be much more effective than with purified Ags and that it cannot completely be mimicked by purified Ags administered with adjuvant.
Legal argumentation and evidence

What do you do to start reading legal argumentation and evidence? Searching the book that you love to read first or find an interesting book that will make you want to read? Everybody has difference with their reason of reading a book. Actuary, reading habit must be from earlier. Many people may be love to read, but not a book. It's not fault. Someone will be bored to open the thick book with small words to read. In more, this is the real condition. So do happen probably with this legal argumentation and evidence.
A Situated Model of Active Vision

There are two main approaches to active vision for classification. The probabilistic approach employs a belief state concerning the class of the instance and selects actions to reduce uncertainty in the belief state. The situated approach directly learns a mapping from observations to actions (including the classification), driven by the performance on the classification task. One of the advantages of the probabilistic approach is that its action selection takes uncertainty into account. In this paper, we show that the situated approach also takes uncertainty into account in its action selection. To this end, we investigate how a situated gaze-control model without any memory can improve its performance over time in a classification task. We show that it does so by reducing the entropy of the posterior distributions of the possible observations. In this manner, the situated gaze-control model reduces class uncertainty in its observations. In addition, we show that the fixation location of the model serves as a memory of previous observations, which allows the memory-less model to verify conjunctions and disjunctions of facial properties.
NOX2 As a Target for Drug Development: Indications, Possible Complications, and Progress.

SIGNIFICANCE NOX2 is important for host defense, and yet is implicated in a large number of diseases in which inflammation plays a role in pathogenesis. These include acute and chronic lung inflammatory diseases, stroke, traumatic brain injury, and neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer's and Parkinson's Diseases. RECENT ADVANCES Recent drug development programs have targeted several NOX isoforms that are implicated in a variety of diseases. The focus has been primarily on NOX4 and NOX1 rather than on NOX2, due, in part, to concerns about possible immunosuppressive side effects. Nevertheless, NOX2 clearly contributes to the pathogenesis of many inflammatory diseases, and its inhibition is predicted to provide a novel therapeutic approach. CRITICAL ISSUES Possible side effects that might arise from targeting NOX2 are discussed, including the possibility that such inhibition will contribute to increased infections and/or autoimmune disorders. The state of the field with regard to existing NOX2 inhibitors and targeted development of novel inhibitors is also summarized. FUTURE DIRECTIONS NOX2 inhibitors show particular promise for the treatment of inflammatory diseases, both acute and chronic. Theoretical side effects include pro-inflammatory and autoimmune complications and should be considered in any therapeutic program, but in our opinion, available data do not indicate that they are sufficiently likely to eliminate NOX2 as a drug target, particularly when weighed against the seriousness of many NOX2-related indications. Model studies demonstrating efficacy with minimal side effects are needed to encourage future development of NOX2 inhibitors as therapeutic agents.
Clock genes may influence bipolar disorder susceptibility and dysfunctional circadian rhythm

Several previous studies suggest that dysfunction of circadian rhythms may increase susceptibility to bipolar disorder (BP). We conducted an association study of five circadian genes (CRY2, PER1‐3, and TIMELESS) in a family collection of 36 trios and 79 quads (Sample I), and 10 circadian genes (ARNTL, ARNTL2, BHLHB2, BHLHB3, CLOCK, CRY1, CSNK1D, CSNK1E, DBP, and NR1D1) in an extended family collection of 70 trios and 237 quads (Sample II), which includes the same 114 families but not necessarily the same individuals as Sample I. In Sample II, the Sibling‐Transmission Disequilibrium Test (sib‐tdt) analysis showed nominally significant association of BP with three SNPs within or near the CLOCK gene (rs534654, P = 0.0097; rs6850524, P = 0.012; rs4340844, P = 0.015). In addition, SNPs in the ARNTL2, CLOCK, DBP, and TIMELESS genes and haplotypes in the ARNTL, CLOCK, CSNK1E, and TIMELESS genes showed suggestive evidence of association with several circadian phenotypes identified in BP patients. However, none of these associations reached gene‐wide or experiment‐wide significance after correction for multiple‐testing. A multi‐locus interaction between rs6442925 in the 5′ upstream of BHLHB2, rs1534891 in CSNK1E, and rs534654 near the 3′ end of the CLOCK gene, however, is significantly associated with BP (P = 0.00000172). It remains significant after correcting for multiple testing using the False Discovery Rate method. Our results indicate an interaction between three circadian genes in susceptibility to bipolar disorder. © 2008 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Impact of Hospital Provider Volume on Outcome for Radical Urological Cancer Surgery in England

Introduction: Complex surgical procedures are associated with higher mortality and morbidity. There is a paucity of data supporting a volume-outcome relationship in the United Kingdom. We analysed Hospital Episode Statistics (HES) to contemplate the association of hospital provider volume and short-term outcomes (mortality rate and hospital stay) for 3 radical urological procedures in England. Materials and Methods: The HES database was extracted for radical prostatectomy (RP), radical cystectomy (RC) and radical nephrectomy (RN) using ICD-10 and OPCS-4 codes for 7 years. Hospitals were divided into quartiles depending on the annual hospital volume. The impact of hospital provider volume was analysed for outcomes. Results: Overall 43,946 patients were included in the study. RP patients had the lowest mortality rate (0.2%) and shorter in-patient stay (7 days). Mortality from RC and RN were 475 (5.3%) and 537 (2.6%), respectively. There was no significant difference for mortality following RP in four volume groups (p = 0.76). The mortality rate for RC decreased from 6.9% in the very low-volume group to 4.1% in the high-volume group (p < 0.001) without change in the in-hospital stay. The proportion of patients treated at high-volume centres for RP, RC and RN has increased from 0 to 42, 22 to 35 and 10 to 38%, respectively, over a 7-year study period. Conclusion: In England, hospital provider volume has a significant impact on outcome measures for radical pelvic urological procedures with a lower mortality (RC) and shorter in-patient stay (RP). Thus HES data from England support the hospital volume-outcome relationship and emphasise the centralisation of care for radical urological procedures.
Neurolin, the Goldfish Homolog of DM-GRASP, Is Involved in Retinal Axon Pathfinding to the Optic Disk

Young axons of new retinal ganglion cells (RGCs) in the continuously growing goldfish retina fasciculate with one another and their immediate forerunners on their path toward the optic disk and along the optic nerve. They express the immunoglobulin superfamily cell adhesion molecules (CAMs) neurolin (DM-GRASP) and the L1-like E587 antigen. Repeated injections of Fab fragments from polyclonal antisera against neurolin (neurolin Fabs) into the eye of 3.4-cm-long and rapidly growing goldfish caused highly aberrant pathways of young RGC axon subfascicles in the dorsal retina. Many axons grew in circles and failed to reach the optic disk. In contrast, E587 Fabs, used in parallel experiments, disrupted the fascicles but did not interfere with the disk-directed growth. Neurolin Fabs also disturbed axonal fasciculation in vivo as well as in vitrobut less severely than E587 Fabs. Coinjections of both Fabs increased defasciculation of the dorsal axons in both aberrant and disk-directed routes. They also disrupted the order of young RGC axons in the optic nerve more severely than E587 Fabs alone. This demonstrates that the development of tight and orderly fascicles in the dorsal retina and in the optic nerve requires both E587 antigen and neurolin. More importantly, our results suggest an involvement of neurolin in RGC axonal guidance from the retinal periphery to the optic disk. Because disrupted fascicles and errant axon routes were found only in the dorsal retinal half, a cooperation with so-called positional markers may be conceived.
Structural analyses of NEAT1 lncRNAs suggest long-range RNA interactions that may contribute to paraspeckle architecture

Abstract Paraspeckles are nuclear bodies that regulate multiple aspects of gene expression. The long non-coding RNA (lncRNA) NEAT1 is essential for paraspeckle formation. NEAT1 has a highly ordered spatial organization within the paraspeckle, such that its 5′ and 3′ ends localize on the periphery of paraspeckle, while central sequences of NEAT1 are found within the paraspeckle core. As such, the structure of NEAT1 RNA may be important as a scaffold for the paraspeckle. In this study, we used SHAPE probing and computational analyses to investigate the secondary structure of human and mouse NEAT1. We propose a secondary structural model of the shorter (3,735 nt) isoform hNEAT1_S, in which the RNA folds into four separate domains. The secondary structures of mouse and human NEAT1 are largely different, with the exception of several short regions that have high structural similarity. Long-range base-pairing interactions between the 5′ and 3′ ends of the long isoform NEAT1 (NEAT1_L) were predicted computationally and verified using an in vitro RNA–RNA interaction assay. These results suggest that the conserved role of NEAT1 as a paraspeckle scaffold does not require extensively conserved RNA secondary structure and that long-range interactions among NEAT1 transcripts may have an important architectural function in paraspeckle formation.
Accelerated secure GUI for virtualized mobile handsets

Mobile handsets, especially so-called smartphones, have become an indispensable commodity in day-to-day life. However, their growing versatility came at the cost of ever-increasing complexity, and this raises severe security concerns. This has come to be especially problematic for corporate IT infrastructures, because it is increasingly hard to reconcile personal user expectations with corporate security demands. A particular manifestation of this quandary is the bring-your-own-device (BYOD) application, where multiple mutually distrustful stakeholders maintain individual security interests. A technique for safeguarding these interests is virtualization. Limited computational capabilities and battery capacity pose challenges to virtualization being a nascent discipline in the embedded computing realm. Graphical user interfaces of smartphones rely heavily on graphics acceleration hardware, a fact that makes moving a contemporary smartphone operating system into a virtual machine particularly challenging. This work sets out to explore the threats that arise by sharing the graphical user interface infrastructure of a smartphone among multiple virtual machines. These findings have led to the development of a small and strongly compartmentalized secure graphical user interface infrastructure, which provides an identifiable and trusted path between the user and the virtual machine and which caters to the performance demands of contemporary mobile user interfaces by allowing shared access to graphics acceleration hardware. A thorough performance evaluation employing a series of specially tailored evaluation tools attests that the working prototype built and described as part of this work has outstanding performance, matching a non-virtualized smartphone, with only little impact on the system’s load and latency.
A Field Guide to Designing a Health Communication Strategy the Components of a Communication Strategy Outline

l Why the word " strategic is important in health communication l The importance of having a vision l The Process of Behavior Change (PBC) framework and the " P " Process l The definition and characteristics of strategic health communication As you embark on the process of developing a health communication strategy, you will need to have a framework in mind to help organize the information gathered. The following outline lists the components that should be included in an integrated, multiyear, multiphased communication strategy. The elements in this outline will be discussed in detail in the following chapters. You will note that the communication strategy outline does not exactly match the chapter titles and chapter subheadings. This discrepancy is intentional, as the communication strategy outline is intended to be a synthesis of the strategic design process, while the chapters include detailed steps to follow at each stage of the process.
Improve Decision Trees for Probability-Based Ranking by Lazy Learners

Existing work shows that classic decision trees have inherent deficiencies in obtaining a good probability-based ranking (e.g. AUC). This paper aims to improve the ranking performance under decision-tree paradigms by presenting two new models. The intuition behind our work is that probability-based ranking is a relative metric among samples, therefore, distinct probabilities are crucial for accurate ranking. The first model, lazy distance-based tree (LDTree), uses a lazy learner at each leaf to explicitly distinguish the different contributions of leaf samples when estimating the probabilities for an unlabeled sample. The second model, eager distance-based tree (EDTree), improves LDTree by changing it into an eager algorithm. In both models, each unlabeled sample is assigned a set of unique probabilities of class membership instead of a set of uniformed ones, which gives finer resolution to differentiate samples and leads to the improvement of ranking. On 34 UCI sample sets, experiments verify that our models greatly outperform C4.5, C4.4 and other standard smoothing methods designed for better ranking
Scalable atomic multicast

We present a new scalable fault-tolerant algorithm which ensures total order delivery of messages sent to multiple groups of processes. Our algorithm is particularly well suited for large scale systems because: (1) any process can multicast a message to one or more groups of processes without being forced to join those groups; (2) inter-group total order is ensured system-wide but, for each individual multicast, the number and size of messages exchanged depends only on the number of addressees; (3) process failure detection does not need to be reliable. Our algorithm also exhibits a modular design. It uses two companion protocols, namely a reliable multicast protocol and a consensus protocol, and these protocols are not required to use the same communication channels or to share common variables with the total order protocol. This approach follows a design methodology based on the composition of (encapsulated) micro-protocols.
Fuzzy appraisal approach for maintainability assesment of software system

Quality is a very important factor for developed software systems. The quality itself depends on various important attributes. Out of these, software system Maintainability is thought to be the most costly and time consuming stage in the software development life cycle as it uses maximum resources and effort which are allocated to the whole process. Maintainability, being an imperative quality property in practically every quality model, is chosen to be the key focus of this paper. This research paper proposes a model for maintainability in accordance to it's fuzzy aspects. Fuzzy logic deals with technical uncertainty using Fuzzy Mathematics and is known to handle complex problems; use of AHP technique has been implemented. An Object-oriented system has been used as an example.
TandemTrack: Promoting Consistent Exercise Leveraging Multimodal Training and Tracking

As smart speakers such as the Amazon Echo have grown in popularity, these devices have presented new opportunities for exploring voice interaction, particularly in the domain of exercise. We have created TandemTrack, a multimodal system comprised of a mobile app and an Alexa skill whose capabilities include exercise guidance, data capture, feedback, and reminder. We propose using TandemTrack in a deployment study to explore and analyze individuals' preferences and use of voice and visual interactions, and to test TandemTrack's effectiveness as a whole in promoting consistent exercise habits while additionally comparing the effectiveness of the app against the skill. Not only does TandemTrack make important steps in addressing gaps in currently available exercise assistants, but also, more importantly, we believe this is the first study to investigate the specific value that voice interactions may provide over other technologies in promoting consistent exercise.
Microstructure and Mechanical Properties of Ti-6.5Al-3.5Mo-1.5Zr-0.3Si Alloy Fabricated by Arc Additive Manufacturing with Post Heat Treatment

Wire arc additive manufacturing (WAAM) can achieve low-cost, short-cyclemanufacturing of titanium alloys and has promising application prospects. In this paper, themicrostructure and mechanical properties of both as-deposited and heat-treated Ti-6.5Al-3.5Mo-1.5Zr-0.3Si(TC11) alloys fabricated byWAAM were investigated. The results show that continuousgrain boundary α(αGB) phase and basket-weave microstructure can be observed in the as-depositedTC11 alloy. And the as-deposited alloy exhibits high ductility but low strength. After the annealingtreatment, the microstructure becomes thicker and the strength becomes lower. Accordingly, a duplexheat treatment near β transus was designed. We can observed that the content of α phase in themicrostructure was gradually decreased, and the continuous αGB was broken gradually. As thetemperature increases, the strength and ductility of TC11 alloy increase first and then decrease, andthe best comprehensive mechanical properties are achieved at 970°C.
Veränderungen am Bewegungsapparat als Folge von Amputationen an der unteren Extremität

Zusammenfassung Hintergrund: Häufig wird angenommen, dass bei Amputierten ein höheres Risiko für degenerative Veränderungen am Bewegungsapparat vorliegt. Inwieweit dies in der wissenschaftlichen Literatur bestätigt wird, wurde mit der vorliegenden Arbeit untersucht. Insbesondere wurde analysiert, wie hoch das Risiko von verschiedenen degenerativen Erkrankungen für Amputierte ist. Material und Methoden: Es wurde eine systematische Literaturrecherche in wissenschaftlichen Datenbanken hinsichtlich amputationsbedingter Veränderungen durchgeführt. Alle thematisch passenden Artikel wurden qualitativ analysiert, die vorliegenden quantitativen Ergebnisse der Studien zusammengefasst und mit Daten für die nicht amputierte Bevölkerung verglichen. Ergebnisse: Insgesamt wurden 40 Publikationen identifiziert, die die Einschlusskriterien erfüllen. Die Zusammenfassung aller quantitativen Ergebnisse zeigte eine erhöhte Prävalenz von Beschwerden am Bewegungsapparat im Vergleich zur nicht amputierten Bevölkerung: Rückenschmerzen zeigen sich bei 56 % aller Amputierten. Gonarthrose kontralateral ist radiologisch bei 35 % aller Amputierten nachweisbar und klinisch bei 33 %. Klinische Symptome der Koxarthrose sind ipsilateral bei 15 % aller Amputierten und kontralateral bei 20 % zu beobachten. 87 % aller Amputierten weisen eine Verringerung der Knochendichte an der ipsilateralen Hüfte auf und eine Muskelatrophie ist ipsilateral bei allen Amputierten zu diagnostizieren. Schlussfolgerung: Durch die Weiterentwicklung der Prothesenpassteile ist es erfahrungsgemäß möglich, die Prothesenlänge an die kontralaterale Seite weitestgehend anzupassen, sodass es nicht mehr zu der in früherer Literatur beschriebenen Beinlängendifferenz kommt. Dadurch scheinen Veränderungen an der Wirbelsäule bei Amputierten seltener geworden zu sein und werden deshalb wahrscheinlich in der aktuellen Literatur nicht mehr diskutiert. Das jeweilige Risiko von Rückenschmerzen, Gonarthrose kontralateral, verminderter Knochendichte an der ipsilateralen Hüfte sowie Muskelatrophien ipsilateral ist allerdings immer noch deutlich erhöht im Vergleich zur Normalbevölkerung. Die Prävalenz von Rückenschmerzen und Gonarthrose steigt mit der Amputationshöhe. Durch die Weiterentwicklung von Passteilen und die Optimierungen der prothetischen Versorgung können möglicherweise auch diese Risiken weiter reduziert werden. Einerseits wird aufgrund einer besseren Versorgungsqualität das Hilfsmittel häufiger genutzt. Andererseits wird eine optimierte Prothese stärker belastet, wodurch die Last auf beide Beine gleichmäßiger verteilt wird. Beides resultiert in einer physiologischeren Belastung des Bewegungsapparats. Inwieweit der kontralaterale Fuß degenerative Veränderungen aufweist, konnte innerhalb der wissenschaftlichen Literatur nicht ausreichend festgestellt werden. Hierzu bedarf es weiterer Studien.
Hardware-accelerated SSH on self-reconfigurable systems

The performance of security applications can be greatly improved by accelerating the cryptographic algorithms in hardware. In this paper, an implementation of the secure shell (SSH) application is presented. A self-reconfigurable platform based on a Xilinx Spartan-3 FPGA has been employed to implement a MicroBlaze-based embedded system, which executes SSH under the uCLinux operative system. Run-time reconfiguration is used to change the cryptographic coprocessors utilized for data ciphering. The performance of SSH has been improved and, in comparison to other alternatives not using reconfiguration, a reduction of the area requirements was also achieved.