Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Characterization of two distinct primary T cell populations that secrete interleukin 2 upon recognition of class I or class II major histocompatibility antigens

This study has characterized the primary T cell subpopulations that secrete IL-2 in response to recognition of either class I or class II MHC encoded determinants. The addition to culture of anti-IL-2-R mAb inhibited the consumption of IL-2 by activated lymphocytes during the response period, permitting a much more accurate assessment of the amount of IL-2 produced in the response cultures. Using this response system, we found that primary T cell populations contain two IL-2- secreting T cell subsets that express reciprocal phenotypes and different MHC recognition specificities: an L3T4+, Lyt-2- T cell subset responsive to both class I and class II MHC alloantigens, and an L3T4- Lyt-2+ T cell subset responsive only to class I MHC alloantigens. The L3T4+ T cell subset expressed a broad functional response repertoire in that L3T4+ T cells were triggered to secrete IL-2 upon recognition of unmodified self-Ia determinants, allogeneic Ia determinants, and class I alloantigens presented by self-Ia determinants. The activation of L3T4+ IL-2-secreting T cells, even those responsive to class I MHC alloantigens, could be blocked completely by anti-Ia mAbs, confirming that the L3T4+ T cell subset was in fact class II restricted. In contrast, the Lvt-2+ T cell subset expressed a narrow functional response repertoire in that they were triggered to secrete IL-2 only in response to allogeneic class I MHC determinants, and were not triggered to secrete IL-2 even in response to TNP-modified self-MHC determinants. The specificity of Lyt-2+ IL-2-secreting T cells for class I MHC allodeterminants was confirmed by the observations that: (a) their activation could be blocked completely by anti-class I mAbs, (b) they could be triggered by Ia- cell lines which expressed class I MHC alloantigens and possessed accessory function, and (c) they responded to class I MHC alloantigens but failed to respond to class II MHC alloantigens, even in the presence of exogenously added second signals that circumvented the requirement for alloantigen-bearing accessory cells. Finally, the frequency of primary Lyt-2+ T cells that secreted IL-2 in response to class I (Kbm1) MHC alloantigens was shown to be only minimally lower than that of L3T4+ T cells that secreted IL-2 in response to class II (I-Abm12) MHC alloantigens. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)
A new method of deep synergetic neural network for face recognition

In this paper, we propose a new method, i.e. deep synergetic neural network_one (DSNN_1) for face recognition. DSSN_1 is built by a top-down manner, and it can eliminate theof pseudo-states with the traditional neural network. The experiments are performed to verify the performance of DSSN_1 on two famous face databases, i.e. AR and ORL. The experimental results indicate that the proposed DSNN_1 outperforms the SNN and convolutional neural network(CNN).
Integrated Systems and Technologies In Vivo Magnetic Resonance Imaging of the Estrogen Receptor in an Orthotopic Model of Human Breast Cancer

Histologic overexpression of the estrogen receptor a (ER) is a well-established prognostic marker in breast cancer. Noninvasive imaging techniques that could detect ER overexpression would be useful in a variety of settings where patients' biopsies are problematic to obtain. This study focused on developing, by in vivo MRI, strategies to measure the level of ER expression in an orthotopic mouse model of human breast cancer. Specifically, novel ER-targeted contrast agents based on pyridine-tetra-acetate-Gd(III) chelate (PTA-Gd) conjugated to 17b-estradiol (EPTA-Gd) or to tamoxifen (TPTA-Gd) were examined in ER-positive or ER-negative tumors. Detection of specific interactions of EPTA-Gd with ER were documented that could differentiate ERpositive and ER-negative tumors. In vivo competition experiments confirmed that the enhanced detection capability of EPTA-Gdwas based specifically on ER targeting. In contrast, PTA-Gd acted as an extracellular probe that enhanced ER detection similarly in either tumor type, confirming a similar vascular perfusion efficiency in ER-positive and ER-negative tumors in the model. Finally, TPTA-Gd accumulated selectively inmuscle and could not preferentially identify ER-positive tumors. Together, these results define a novel MRI probe that can permit selective noninvasive imaging of ER-positive tumors in vivo. Cancer Res; 71(24); 7387–97. 2011 AACR.
Microarchitecture of a high radix router

Evolving semiconductor and circuit technology has greatly increased the pin bandwidth available to a router chip. In the early 90s, routers were limited to 10Gb/s of pin bandwidth. Today 1Tb/s is feasible, and we expect 20Tb/s of I/O bandwidth by 2010. A high-radix router that provides many narrow Dalports is more effective in converting pin band-width to reduced latency and reduced cost than the alternative of building a router with a few wide ports. However, increasing the radix (or degree) of a router raises several challenges as internal switches and allocators scale as the square of the radix. This paper addresses these challenges by proposing and evaluating alternative microarchitectures for high radix routers. We show that the use of a hierarchical switch organization with per-virtual-channel buffers in each subswitch enables an area savings of 40% compared to a fully buffered crossbar and a throughput increase of 20-60% compared to a conventional crossbar implementation.
Findings of the International Cooperative INTERSALT Study

INTERSALT, an international cooperative study on electrolytes and other factors related to blood pressure, found, in within-population analyses involving 10,079 persons, a significant positive association between 24-hour urinary sodium excretion and systolic blood pressure and between the sodium/potassium ratio and systolic blood pressure. These significant findings were derived from analyses for individuals from all 52 centers and from the 48 centers remaining when persons from four low sodium centers were excluded. Potassium excretion of individuals was significantly and independently related inversely to their systolic blood pressure. For men and women, both separate and combined, the relation between sodium and systolic blood pressure was stronger for older than younger adults, perhaps reflecting the result of longer exposure with age or diminished capacity to handle a sodium load. Relations between electrolyte excretion and diastolic blood pressure in individuals were weaker than for systolic blood pressure. Body mass index and heavy alcohol consumption of individuals were strongly and independently related to blood pressure. In cross-population analyses with n=52 or n=48, sample median sodium excretion was significantly and independently related to the slope of systolic blood pressure and diastolic blood pressure with age. Other ecological analyses yielded inconsistent results. Four isolated populations showed low sodium excretion, low sodium/ potassium excretion, low body mass index, and low alcohol consumption; sample median blood pressures were low, there was little or no upward slope of blood pressure with age, and high blood pressure was rare or nonexistent
Academic Transfer Shock and Social Integration: A Comparison of Outcomes for Traditional and Nontraditional Students Transferring from 2-Year to 4-Year Institutions.

This study explored whether traditional and nontraditional students who transferred from 2-year to 4-year institutions experienced differences in transfer shock, academic integration, and social integration. A substantial body of research comparing transfer students to native students on transfer shock exists, while only a few qualitative studies have focused on how transfer students experience academic and social integration at the transfer institution. Further, the major studies examining transfer student behavior place all transfer students into a single category by the one thing they share in commona transition experience. Due to the increasing numbers and diversity of transfer students it is important to examine how their unique characteristics influence transfer and subsequent integration into their new environment. The sample for this study was taken from the Beginning Postsecondary Students Longitudinal Study (BPS: 04/09). The large, nationally representative dataset was filtered to include only students who transferred from 2-year institutions to 4-year institutions, creating a much smaller sample of students. The main independent variable in the analyses was age. For this study traditional students were defined as those less than 24 years of age, while nontraditional students were those 24 years or older. Linear regression was used to examine whether traditional and nontraditional students experienced differences in transfer shock, level of academic integration, and level of social integration following transfer. The findings from this study suggest that there is no relationship between age and transfer experiences. Further research is necessary to determine whether the absence of a relationship truly exists or whether the small sample size in this analysis influenced the outcome.
Genomic distribution and functional analyses of potential G-quadruplex-forming sequences in Saccharomyces cerevisiae

Although well studied in vitro, the in vivo functions of G-quadruplexes (G4-DNA and G4-RNA) are only beginning to be defined. Recent studies have demonstrated enrichment for sequences with intramolecular G-quadruplex forming potential (QFP) in transcriptional promoters of humans, chickens and bacteria. Here we survey the yeast genome for QFP sequences and similarly find strong enrichment for these sequences in upstream promoter regions, as well as weaker but significant enrichment in open reading frames (ORFs). Further, four findings are consistent with roles for QFP sequences in transcriptional regulation. First, QFP is correlated with upstream promoter regions with low histone occupancy. Second, treatment of cells with N-methyl mesoporphyrin IX (NMM), which binds G-quadruplexes selectively in vitro, causes significant upregulation of loci with QFP-possessing promoters or ORFs. NMM also causes downregulation of loci connected with the function of the ribosomal DNA (rDNA), which itself has high QFP. Third, ORFs with QFP are selectively downregulated in sgs1 mutants that lack the G4-DNA-unwinding helicase Sgs1p. Fourth, a screen for yeast mutants that enhance or suppress growth inhibition by NMM revealed enrichment for chromatin and transcriptional regulators, as well as telomere maintenance factors. These findings raise the possibility that QFP sequences form bona fide G-quadruplexes in vivo and thus regulate transcription.
Fluid Flow Models and Queues—A Connection by Stochastic Coupling

We establish in a direct manner that the steady state distribution of Markovian fluid flow models can be obtained from a quasi birth and death queue. This is accomplished through the construction of the processes on a common probability space and the demonstration of a distributional coupling relation between them. The results here provide an interpretation for the quasi-birth-and-death processes in the matrix-geometric approach of Ramaswami and subsequent results based on them obtained by Soares and Latouche.
Problems in Evaluating Grammatical Error Detection Systems

Many evaluation issues for grammatical error detection have previously been overlooked, making it hard to draw meaningful comparisons between different approaches, even when they are evaluated on the same corpus. To begin with, the three-way contingency between a writer’s sentence, the annotator’s correction, and the system’s output makes evaluation more complex than in some other NLP tasks, which we address by presenting an intuitive evaluation scheme. Of particular importance to error detection is the skew of the data ‐ the low frequency of errors as compared to non-errors ‐ which distorts some traditional measures of performance and limits their usefulness, leading us to recommend the reporting of raw measurements (true positives, false negatives, false positives, true negatives). Other issues that are particularly vexing for error detection focus on defining these raw measurements: specifying the size or scope of an error, properly treating errors as graded rather than discrete phenomena, and counting non-errors. We discuss recommendations for best practices with regard to reporting the results of system evaluation for these cases, recommendations which depend upon making clear one’s assumptions and applications for error detection. By highlighting the problems with current error detection evaluation, the field will be better able to move forward.
Mentalism and mechanism: the twin modes of human cognition

only confusion can arise from the use of an animal-mind concept in any explanatory role in biological studies of behaviour. Mind may be self evident to most people, but I see only a remote possibility of its being made logically or empirically evident. I feel intuitively that my daughter’s horse has a mind. I am even more convinced that my daughter has. Neither conclusion is supported by reason or evidence. Only if it violates physical laws would mind be a factor that biologists would have to deal with. There is no such evidence for mind as an entity that interferes with physical processes, and therefore there can be no physical or biological science of mind. no kind of material reductionism can approach any mental phenomenon.
Modelling meningococcal meningitis in the African meningitis belt

SUMMARY Meningococcal meningitis is a major public health problem in a large area of sub-Saharan Africa known as the meningitis belt. Disease incidence increases every dry season, before dying out with the first rains of the year. Large epidemics, which can kill tens of thousands of people, occur frequently but unpredictably every 6–14 years. It has been suggested that these patterns may be attributable to complex interactions between the bacteria, human hosts and the environment. We used deterministic compartmental models to investigate how well simple model structures with seasonal forcing were able to qualitatively capture these patterns of disease. We showed that the complex and irregular timing of epidemics could be caused by the interaction of temporary immunity conferred by carriage of the bacteria together with seasonal changes in the transmissibility of infection. This suggests that population immunity is an important factor to include in models attempting to predict meningitis epidemics.
EHSB's Free Resources for Environmental Health Practitioners.

I n today’s fast-paced, budget-driven world, environmental health practitioners need all the help they can get keeping up-to­ date with the latest research and best prac­ tices for their diverse field. The envir onmental health workforce needs to be strong, sustained, and prepared to meet today’s challenges and improve the health and safety of all. To help the environmental health work­ force meet these challenges, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Environ­ mental Health Services Branch (EHSB) pro­ vides free tools and guidance, training, and research to prevent foodborne illnesses and outbreaks, protect recreational and drink­ ing water sources, and improve the perfor­ mance of environmental health programs and practitioners. Our resources are specifi­ cally intended for practitioners and programs serving states, tribes, localities, and territo­ ries. This column highlights a sampling of the free resources available on the EHSB Web site (www.cdc.gov/nceh/ehs).
Edit propagation using geometric relationship functions

We propose a method for propagating edit operations in 2D vector graphics, based on geometric relationship functions. These functions quantify the geometric relationship of a point to a polygon, such as the distance to the boundary or the direction to the closest corner vertex. The level sets of the relationship functions describe points with the same relationship to a polygon. For a given query point, we first determine a set of relationships to local features, construct all level sets for these relationships, and accumulate them. The maxima of the resulting distribution are points with similar geometric relationships. We show extensions to handle mirror symmetries, and discuss the use of relationship functions as local coordinate systems. Our method can be applied, for example, to interactive floorplan editing, and it is especially useful for large layouts, where individual edits would be cumbersome. We demonstrate populating 2D layouts with tens to hundreds of objects by propagating relatively few edit operations.
Mental State Understanding in Children with Agenesis of the Corpus Callosum

Impaired social functioning is a well-known outcome of individuals with agenesis of the corpus callosum. Social deficits in nonliteral language comprehension, humor, social reasoning, and recognition of facial expression have all been documented in adults with agenesis of the corpus callosum. In the present study, we examined the emotional and mentalizing deficits that contributing to the social-cognitive development in children with isolated corpus callosum agenesia, including emotion recognition, theory of mind, executive function, working memory, and behavioral impairments as assessed by the parents. The study involved children between the age of 6 and 8 years along with typically developing children who were matched by IQ, age, gender, education, and caregiver's education. The findings indicated that children with agenesis of the corpus callosum exhibited mild impairments in all social factors (recognizing emotions, understanding theory of mind), and showed more behavioral problems than control children. Taken together, these findings suggest that reduced callosal connectivity may contribute to the development of higher-order social-cognitive deficits, involving limits of complex and rapidly occurring social information to be processed. The studies of AgCC shed lights of the role of structural connectivity across the hemispheres in neurodevelopmental disorders.
Vasopressin Proves Es-sense-tial: Vasopressin and the Modulation of Sensory Processing in Mammals

As mammals develop, they encounter increasing social complexity in the surrounding world. In order to survive, mammals must show appropriate behaviors toward their mates, offspring, and same-sex conspecifics. Although the behavioral effects of the neuropeptide arginine vasopressin (AVP) have been studied in a variety of social contexts, the effects of this neuropeptide on multimodal sensory processing have received less attention. AVP is widely distributed through sensory regions of the brain and has been demonstrated to modulate olfactory, auditory, gustatory, and visual processing. Here, we review the evidence linking AVP to the processing of social stimuli in sensory regions of the brain and explore how sensory processing can shape behavioral responses to these stimuli. In addition, we address the interplay between hormonal and neural AVP in regulating sensory processing of social cues. Because AVP pathways show plasticity during development, early life experiences may shape life-long processing of sensory information. Furthermore, disorders of social behavior such as autism and schizophrenia that have been linked with AVP also have been linked with dysfunctions in sensory processing. Together, these studies suggest that AVP's diversity of effects on social behavior across a variety of mammalian species may result from the effects of this neuropeptide on sensory processing.
Network intrusion and failure detection system with statistical analyses of packet headers

In this research, practical application for quasi-realtime intrusion and network failure detection was designed and implemented. IP packet headers are counted at the monitoring point and summarized in every 5 minutes. Then four kind of statistical analyses are applied to the 5-minute summaries to find a sudden increase/decrease. As the result, the developed application works fine with a standard desktop PC. Warnings were reported in at most 1 minute after every 5-minute summary. In addition to the warning report, Web interfaces were implemented to help the administrator to trace the cause of a warning.
Insights into chitosan antibiofilm activity against methicillin‐resistant Staphylococcus aureus

Chitosan is a natural compound that has been validated as a viable antimicrobial agent against Staphylococcus aureus. With this work we sought to evaluate the planktonic and sessile sensitivity of methicillin‐resistant S. aureus to chitosan's activity and evaluate if methicillin‐resistant S. aureus (MRSA) would be more or less sensitive to chitosan's activity than methicillin‐sensitive S. aureus (MSSA).
An Integrated Microrobotic Platform for On‐Demand, Targeted Therapeutic Interventions

The presented microrobotic platform combines together the advantages of self-folding NIR light sensitive polymer bilayers, magnetic alginate microbeads, and a 3D manipulation system, to propose a solution for targeted, on-demand drug and cell delivery. First feasibility studies are presented together with the potential of the full design.
Contribution Fruit and Vegetable Intake and Risk of Total Cancer and Cardiovascular Disease Japan Public Health Center-based Prospective Study

1 Department of Clinical Epidemiology, Tohoku University Graduate School of Medicine, Sendai, Japan. 2 Epidemiology and Prevention Division, Research Center for Cancer Prevention and Screening, National Cancer Center, Tokyo, Japan. 3 Public Health, Department of Social and Environmental Medicine, Graduate School of Medicine, Osaka University, Osaka, Japan. 4 Division of Health Policy, Tohoku University School of Public Policy, Sendai, Japan.
Earlier Mother's Age at Menarche Predicts Rapid Infancy Growth and Childhood Obesity

Background Early menarche tends to be preceded by rapid infancy weight gain and is associated with increased childhood and adult obesity risk. As age at menarche is a heritable trait, we hypothesised that age at menarche in the mother may in turn predict her children's early growth and obesity risk. Methods and Findings We tested associations between mother's age at menarche, mother's adult body size and obesity risk, and her children's growth and obesity risk in 6,009 children from the UK population-based Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) birth cohort who had growth and fat mass at age 9 y measured by dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry. A subgroup of 914 children also had detailed infancy and childhood growth data. In the mothers, earlier menarche was associated with shorter adult height (by 0.64 cm/y), increased weight (0.92 kg/y), and body mass index (BMI, 0.51 kg/m2/y; all p < 0.001). In contrast, in her children, earlier mother's menarche predicted taller height at 9 y (by 0.41 cm/y) and greater weight (0.80 kg/y), BMI (0.29 kg/m2/y), and fat mass index (0.22 kg/m2/year; all p < 0.001). Children in the earliest mother's menarche quintile (≤11 y) were more obese than the oldest quintile (≥15 y) (OR, 2.15, 95% CI 1.46 to 3.17; p < 0.001, adjusted for mother's education and BMI). In the subgroup, children in the earliest quintile showed faster gains in weight (p < 0.001) and height (p < 0.001) only from birth to 2 y, but not from 2 to 9 y (p = 0.3–0.8). Conclusions Earlier age at menarche may be a transgenerational marker of a faster growth tempo, characterised by rapid weight gain and growth, particularly during infancy, and leading to taller childhood stature, but likely earlier maturation and therefore shorter adult stature. This growth pattern confers increased childhood and adult obesity risks.