Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Evaluation of the Sublingual Route for Administration of Influenza H5N1 Virosomes in Combination with the Bacterial Second Messenger c-di-GMP

Avian influenza A H5N1 is a virus with pandemic potential. Mucosal vaccines are attractive as they have the potential to block viruses at the site of entry, thereby preventing both disease and further transmission. The intranasal route is safe for the administration of seasonal live-attenuated influenza vaccines, but may be less suitable for administration of pandemic vaccines. Research into novel mucosal routes is therefore needed. In this study, a murine model was used to compare sublingual administration with intranasal and intramuscular administration of influenza H5N1 virosomes (2 µg haemagglutinin; HA) in combination with the mucosal adjuvant (3′,5′)-cyclic dimeric guanylic acid (c-di-GMP). We found that sublingual immunisation effectively induced local and systemic H5N1-specific humoral and cellular immune responses but that the magnitude of response was lower than after intranasal administration. However, both the mucosal routes were superior to intramuscular immunisation for induction of local humoral and systemic cellular immune responses including high frequencies of splenic H5N1-specific multifunctional (IL-2+TNF-α+) CD4+ T cells. The c-di-GMP adjuvanted vaccine elicited systemic haemagglutination inhibition (HI) antibody responses (geometric mean titres ≥40) both when administered sublingually, intranasally and inramuscularly. In addition, salivary HI antibodies were elicited by mucosal, but not intramuscular vaccination. We conclude that the sublingual route is an attractive alternative for administration of pandemic influenza vaccines.
BODY SIZE OF INSULAR LIZARDS: A PATTERN OF HOLOCENE DWARFISM

Until recently there have been scant historical data available to test and supplement studies on the evolution of body size within insular lizards. However, there is now an accumulating fossil record from islands which shows that numerous species have declined in average maximum body size since the beginning of the Holocene, regardless of phylogenetic afffinities, habits, or even size of the species itself.
pH-Responsive Cellulose/Silk/Fe3O4 Hydrogel Microbeads Designed for Biomedical Applications

In this study, cellulose/Fe3O4 hydrogel microbeads were prepared through the sol–gel transition of a solvent-in-oil emulsion using various cellulose-dissolving solvents and soybean oil without surfactants. Particularly, 40% tetrabutylammonium hydroxide (TBAH) and 40% tetrabutylphosphonium hydroxide (TBPH) dissolved cellulose at room temperature and effectively dispersed Fe3O4, forming cellulose/Fe3O4 microbeads with an average diameter of ~15 µm. Additionally, these solvents co-dissolved cellulose and silk, allowing for the manufacture of cellulose/silk/Fe3O4 hydrogel microbeads with altered surface characteristics. Owing to the negatively charged surface characteristics, the adsorption capacity of the cellulose/silk/Fe3O4 microbeads for the cationic dye crystal violet was >10 times higher than that of the cellulose/Fe3O4 microbeads. When prepared with TBAH, the initial adsorption rate of bovine serum albumin (BSA) on the cellulose/silk/Fe3O4 microbeads was 18.1 times higher than that on the cellulose/Fe3O4 microbeads. When preparing TBPH, the equilibrium adsorption capacity of the cellulose/silk/Fe3O4 microbeads for BSA (1.6 g/g) was 8.5 times higher than that of the cellulose/Fe3O4 microbeads. The pH-dependent BSA release from the cellulose/silk/Fe3O4 microbeads prepared with TBPH revealed 6.1-fold slower initial desorption rates and 5.2-fold lower desorption amounts at pH 2.2 than those at pH 7.4. Cytotoxicity tests on the cellulose and cellulose/silk composites regenerated with TBAH and TBPH yielded nontoxic results. Therefore, cellulose/silk/Fe3O4 microbeads are considered suitable pH-responsive supports for orally administered protein pharmaceuticals.
The cell biology of disease: Cell biology of spinocerebellar ataxia

Ataxia is a neurological disorder characterized by loss of control of body movements. Spinocerebellar ataxia (SCA), previously known as autosomal dominant cerebellar ataxia, is a biologically robust group of close to 30 progressive neurodegenerative diseases. Six SCAs, including the more prevalent SCA1, SCA2, SCA3, and SCA6 along with SCA7 and SCA17 are caused by expansion of a CAG repeat that encodes a polyglutamine tract in the affected protein. How the mutated proteins in these polyglutamine SCAs cause disease is highly debated. Recent work suggests that the mutated protein contributes to pathogenesis within the context of its “normal” cellular function. Thus, understanding the cellular function of these proteins could aid in the development of therapeutics.
Automatic role recognition

The computing community is making significant efforts towards the development of automatic approaches for the analysis of social interactions. The way people interact depends on the context, but there is one aspect that all social interactions seem to have in common: humans behave according to roles. Therefore, recognizing the roles of participants is an essential step towards understanding social interactions and the construction of socially aware computer. This thesis addresses the problem of automatically recognizing roles of participants in multi-party recordings. The objective is to assign to each participant a role. All the proposed approaches use a similar strategy. They all start by segmenting the audio into turns. Those turns are used as basic analysis units. The next step is to extract features accounting for the organization of turns. The more sophisticated approaches extend the features extracted with features from either the prosody or the semantic. Finally, the mapping of people or turns to roles is done using statistical models. The goal of this thesis is to gain a better understanding of role recognition and we will investigate three aspects that can influence the performance of the system: We investigate the impact of modelling the dependency between the roles. We investigate the contribution of different modalities for the effectiveness of role recognition approach. We investigate the effectiveness of the approach for different scenarios. Three models are proposed and tested on three different corpora totalizing more than 90 hours of audio. The first contribution of this thesis is to investigate the combination of turn-taking features and semantic information for role recognition, improving the accuracy of role recognition from a baseline of 46.4% to 67.9% on the AMI meeting corpus. The second contribution is to use features extracted from the prosody to assign roles. The performance of this model is 89.7% on broadcast news and 87.0% on talk-shows. Finally, the third contribution is the development of a model robust to change in the social setting. This model achieved an accuracy of 86.7% on a database composed of a mixture of broadcast news and talk-shows.
'If you listen to me properly, I feel good': a qualitative examination of patient experiences of dietetic consultations.

BACKGROUND There is considerable interest in healthcare research regarding communication skills and some debate surrounding the effectiveness of a patient-centred approach to care. Understanding patient experiences of consultations can help indicate how consultations can be modified to improve effectiveness. At present, there is little research exploring patient experience of dietetic consultations. The present study aimed to achieve a better understanding of patients' experiences of dietetic consultations using qualitative analysis. METHODS Patients undergoing consultations with a dietitian were invited to discuss their experience of the consultation with a research dietitian who was not involved in their care. Individual interviews and focus groups were conducted and analysed using the Framework approach. RESULTS Seventeen patients participated and described their experiences of consultations, which were varied and influenced by factors such as information given (resources, explanation, repetition, consistency); their dietitian's approach (prescriptive or nonprescriptive, use of behaviour change skills), behaviour (listening skills, body language) and appointment (expectations, involvement of the multidisciplinary team, length of time); and their own internal experience (confidence, guilt, frustration). Patients agreed that certain factors, such as good communication and rapport, receiving effective and reliable information and resources, and nonjudgmental, regular support, were important factors in creating a positive experience of their consultation. However, they differed in what they believed constituted these factors. CONCLUSIONS Patients like dietitians to adopt a patient-centred approach, which might be either patient- or practitioner-led, and to take account of what they wanted from consultations, adapting these to meet their individual requirements.
Use of Conventional and Real-Time Polymerase Chain Reaction for Confirmation of Mycobacterium Avium Subsp. Paratuberculosis in a Broth-Based Culture System ESP II

The ESP II Culture System (ESP II), a broth-based culture system, has been modified and optimized for culturing Mycobacterium avium subsp. paratuberculosis (M. paratuberculosis) in animal feces since 2000. Conventional and real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR) assays based on the IS900 sequence were performed as confirmatory tests for M. paratuberculosis in ESP II liquid culture medium. There were no differences between test results of conventional and real-time PCR assays. During the 5-week incubation period, if acid-fast bacilli (AFB) were detected in ESP culture–positive samples, IS900 PCR assays were performed to confirm whether those AFB were M. paratuberculosis. At the end of the 5-week incubation, AF staining was performed on all ESP II–negative cultures to screen any false-negative cultures; IS900 PCR assays were performed on AFB-positive cultures. During a period of 1 year, of a total of 18,499 ESP II cultures, 2,814 (15.2%) PCR confirmation assays were performed. Of those, 2,259 (80%) were both ESP and PCR positive; 104 (4%) were ESP positive and PCR negative; 423 (15%) were ESP negative and PCR positive; 28 (1%) were both ESP and PCR negative. The AF-staining step after the 5-week incubation produced 423 (15%) more PCR-positive cultures. Of a total of 2,814 AFB-positive cultures, 132 (5%) were not confirmed as M. paratuberculosis. Further studies are needed for speciation of non–M. paratuberculosis isolates.
Block-dependent sedation during epidural anaesthesia is associated with delayed brainstem conduction.

BACKGROUND Neuraxial anaesthesia produces a sedative and anaesthetic-sparing effect. Recent evidence suggests that spinal cord anaesthesia modifies reticulo-thalamo-cortical arousal by decreasing afferent sensory transmission. We hypothesized that epidural anaesthesia produces sensory deafferentation-dependent sedation that is associated with impairment of brainstem transmission. We used brainstem auditory evoked potentials (BAEP) to evaluate reticular function in 11 volunteers. METHODS Epidural anaesthesia was induced with 2-chloroprocaine 2%. Haemodynamic and respiratory responses, sensory block level, sedation depth and BAEP were assessed throughout induction and resolution of epidural anaesthesia. Sedation was evaluated using verbal rating score (VRS), observer's assessment alertness/sedation (OAA/S) score, and bispectral index score (BIS). Prediction probability (PK) was used to associate sensory block with sedation, as well as BIS with other sedation measures. Spearman's rank order correlation was used to associate block level and sedation with the absolute and interpeak BAEP latencies. RESULTS Sensory block level significantly predicted VRS (PK=0.747), OAA/S score (PK=0.748) and BIS. BIS predicted VRS and OAA/S score (PK=0.728). The latency of wave III of BAEP significantly correlated with sedation level (rho=0.335, P<0.01) and sensory block (rho=0.394, P<0.01). The other BAEP parameters did not change during epidural anaesthesia. Haemodynamic and respiratory responses remained stable throughout the study. CONCLUSIONS Sedation during epidural anaesthesia depends on sensory block level and is associated with detectable block-dependent alterations in the brainstem auditory evoked responses. Sensory deafferentation may reduce CNS alertness through mechanisms related to brainstem neural activity.
Analytic Performance Evaluation of a New Turbidimetric Immunoassay for Phenytoin on the ADVIA 1650® Analyzer: Effect of Phenytoin Metabolite and Analogue

Phenytoin is an anticonvulsant that requires therapeutic drug monitoring. Recently, Bayer HealthCare, Diagnostics Division released a turbidimetric immunoassay of phenytoin on the ADVIA 1650® analyzer. We evaluated the analytic performance of this assay by comparing values obtained in 52 patients receiving Phenytoin using this new assay with the values obtained by using a widely used fluorescence polarization immunoassay (FPIA). The new turbidimetric immunoassay for phenytoin showed the following imprecision with the low, medium, and high controls: total CV of 5.2% (mean 4.81 μg/mL), 3.7% (mean 16.24 μg/mL), and 4.1% (mean 22.65 μg/mL), respectively. The detection limit of the assay was 0.79 μg/mL, and the assay was linear up to a phenytoin concentration of 46.1 μg/mL. The assay showed excellent dilution recovery and recovery of spiked samples (mean recovery 101.4% and 94.4%, respectively). We observed an excellent correlation between the values obtained by the FPIA (x-axis) assay and the new turbidimetric (y-axis) assay (y = 1.06 x − 0.61, r = 0.98, n = 52). We also determined the cross-reactivity of 5-(p-hydroxyphenyl)-5-phenylhydantoin (HPPH), a major metabolite of phenytoin, and of oxaprozine, an analogue with a similar chemical structure to phenytoin, in both phenytoin assays. Both assays showed almost no cross-reactivity to oxaprozine and only small (5%-8%) cross-reactivity to HPPH. We also found that the turbidimetric assay was free from interference at least up to 1200 mg/dL of hemolysis, 30 mg/dL of free bilirubin, 34.5 mg/dL of conjugated bilirubin, and 750 mg/dL of triglyceride (Intralipid). When a drug-free serum was followed by a serum sample containing 38.5 μg/mL of phenytoin, no sample probe carryover effect was observed. We conclude that the new turbidimetric assay can be used for routine monitoring of phenytoin in clinical laboratories.
Manipulation of Floral Symmetry Does Not Affect Seed Production in Impatiens pallida

The outcomes of past research concerning the role of floral symmetry in plant‐pollinator interactions are mixed. Field manipulations of plants, as well as experiments using artificial arrays, have found evidence for and against a direct relationship between the degree of floral symmetry and subsequent reproductive success. In this study, we test the hypothesis that deviations from perfect floral symmetry in Impatiens pallida (Balsaminaceae) result in direct fitness costs. In two field seasons, we manipulated experimentally floral symmetry in separate populations of plants and measured seed set. We did not address any possible effects of floral asymmetry on male function. We found no significant differences in seed number per fruit among control, symmetrically cut (30% on both lobes), asymmetrically cut (60% on left lobe), and severely mutilated (100% on left lobe) flowers in the field. Post hoc power analyses show that a prohibitively large sample size would be required to detect the observed differences in seed set among treatments. Moreover, the magnitude of the observed differences among treatments is biologically irrelevant. We conclude that the degree of floral symmetry does not affect female reproductive success in this system.
Sensor based operation of Google Street View in iPad

Google Street View is famous as one of the virtual space currently used all over the world. Everyone can over look various places in the world 360-degrees with Google Street View. Although, the operability of current viewer is not intuitive for reaching the area which an user wants to see. Thus the virtual walk behavior often looses smoothness. In order to realize smooth virtual walk, the operation with the feeling near the real world is required. Then, we propose the operation of viewer based on the viewpoint tracking and heading angle of iPad. By the combination of the viewpoint tracking and the heading angle, the virtual walk behavior is realized by the moving the user's gaze point and leaning the iPad.
Prion protein expression aids cellular uptake and veratridine‐induced release of copper

The function of the prion protein is unknown despite suggestions it binds copper. Radioactive copper (Cu67) was used to demonstrate that histidine‐dependent uptake of copper by cerebellar cells in culture is related to the level of PrPc expression. Copper is released by neurones at the synapse. Veratridine‐induced release from synapses was proportional to the level of PrPc expression. Veratridine‐induced release can be abolished only from PrPc expressing cells by pretreatment with phosphatidyl‐specific phospholipase C, an enzyme that cleaves PrPc from the cell surface. These results suggest that PrPc aids cellular copper uptake and may have a function at the synapse related to release of copper during transmission. J. Neurosci. Res. 58:717–725, 1999. © 1999 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
A Quantitative Study of Inhibitory Interneurons in Laminae I-III of the Mouse Spinal Dorsal Horn

Laminae I-III of the spinal dorsal horn contain many inhibitory interneurons that use GABA and/or glycine as a neurotransmitter. Distinct neurochemical populations can be recognised among these cells, and these populations are likely to have differing roles in inhibiting pain or itch. Quantitative studies in rat have shown that inhibitory interneurons account for 25-40% of all neurons in this region. The sst2A receptor is expressed by around half the inhibitory interneurons in laminae I-II, and is associated with particular neurochemically-defined populations. Although much of the work on spinal pain mechanisms has been performed on rat, the mouse is now increasingly used as a model, due to the availability of genetically altered lines. However, quantitative information on the arrangement of interneurons is lacking in the mouse, and it is possible that there are significant species differences in neuronal organisation. In this study, we show that as in the rat, nearly all neurons in laminae I-III that are enriched with glycine also contain GABA, which suggests that GABA-immunoreactivity can be used to identify inhibitory interneurons in this region. These cells account for 26% of the neurons in laminae I-II and 38% of those in lamina III. As in the rat, the sst2A receptor is only expressed by inhibitory interneurons in laminae I-II, and is present on just over half (54%) of these cells. Antibody against the neurokinin 1 receptor was used to define lamina I, and we found that although the receptor was concentrated in this lamina, it was expressed by many fewer cells than in the rat. By estimating the total numbers of neurons in each of these laminae in the L4 segment of the mouse, we show that there are around half as many neurons in each lamina as are present in the corresponding segment of the rat.
Compromising Privacy with Trail Re-Identification : The REIDIT Algorithms

Re-identification is the process of relating unique and specific entities to seemingly anonymous data, and as such, is an attack on the privacy of a data collection. This work introduces a new reidentification attack, termed the trail problem, for data distributed over multiple locations. Through the use of data trails an adversary can independently reconstruct the trails of locations that identified entities and their un-identified data visited, which can then employed for re-identification via trail matching. The attack strategy is based on the premise that data collecting institutions partition and release a dataset as multiple subsets, such that one release contains identifying attributes (e.g. name, social security number, phone number) and a second is devoid of these attributes (e.g. DNA sequences). The trail attack is dependent on whether the identified data is always collected with the un-identified data, termed complete, or whether one of the attributes is under-collected, termed incomplete. Both the complete and incomplete trail problems are formalized and several novel algorithms for re-identification are introduced. Examples are drawn from the areas of clickstream, DNA sequence, health, and video data.
EARLY ONLINE RELEASE

This is a preliminary PDF of the author-produced manuscript that has been peer-reviewed and accepted for publication. Since it is being posted so soon after acceptance, it has not yet been copyedited, formatted, or processed by AMS Publications. This preliminary version of the manuscript may be downloaded, distributed, and cited, but please be aware that there will be visual differences and possibly some content differences between this version and the final published version.
Hysteresis‐Based Design of Dynamic Reference Trajectories to Avoid Saturation in Controlled Wind Turbines

The main objective of this paper is to design a dynamic reference trajectory based on hysteresis to avoid saturation in controlled wind turbines. Basically, the torque controller and pitch controller set‐points are hysteretically manipulated to avoid saturation and drive the system with smooth dynamic changes. Simulation results obtained from a 5MW wind turbine benchmark model show that our proposed strategy has a clear added value with respect to the baseline controller (a well‐known and accepted industrial wind turbine controller). Moreover, the proposed strategy has been tested in healthy conditions but also in the presence of a realistic fault where the baseline controller caused saturation to finally conduct to instability.
The Tight Junction Protein Cingulin Regulates Gene Expression and RhoA Signaling

Tight junctions (TJ) regulate the passage of solutes across epithelial sheets, contribute to the establishment and maintenance of epithelial apico‐basal polarity and are involved in the regulation of gene expression and cell proliferation. Cingulin, a Mr 140 kDa protein localized in the cytoplasmic region of TJ, is not directly required for TJ formation and epithelial polarity but regulates RhoA signaling, through its interaction with the RhoA activator GEF‐H1, and gene expression. Here we describe in more detail the effect of cingulin mutation in embryoid bodies (EB) on gene expression, by identifying the genes that show the highest degree of up‐ or downregulation, and the putative canonical pathways that might be affected by cingulin. Furthermore, we show that full‐length canine GEF‐H1, produced in baculovirus‐infected insect cells, interacts with regions both in the cingulin globular head, and in the coiled‐coil rod domain. These results extend our previous studies and provide new perspectives for the mechanistic analysis of cingulin function.
Towards Distributed MCMC Inference in Probabilistic Knowledge Bases

Probabilistic knowledge bases are commonly used in areas such as large-scale information extraction, data integration, and knowledge capture, to name but a few. Inference in probabilistic knowledge bases is a computationally challenging problem. With this contribution, we present our vision of a distributed inference algorithm based on conflict graph construction and hypergraph sampling. Early empirical results show that the approach efficiently and accurately computes a-posteriori probabilities of a knowledge base derived from a well-known information extraction system.