Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Characterization of chemokines and their receptors in the central nervous system: physiopathological implications

Chemokines represent key factors in the outburst of the immune response, by activating and directing the leukocyte traffic, both in lymphopoiesis and in immune surveillance. Neurobiologists took little interest in chemokines for many years, until their link to acquired immune deficiency syndrome‐associated dementia became established, and thus their importance in this field has been neglected. Nevertheless, the body of data on their expression and role in the CNS has grown in the past few years, along with a new vision of brain as an immunologically competent and active organ. A large number of chemokines and chemokine receptors are expressed in neurons, astrocytes, microglia and oligodendrocytes, either constitutively or induced by inflammatory mediators. They are involved in many neuropathological processes in which an inflammatory state persists, as well as in brain tumor progression and metastasis. Moreover, there is evidence for a crucial role of CNS chemokines under physiological conditions, similar to well known functions in the immune system, such as proliferation and developmental patterning, but also peculiar to the CNS, such as regulation of neural transmission, plasticity and survival.
ASSESSMENT OF A SIMPLE CLINICAL SCORE FOR SCREENING METHICILLIN‐RESISTANT STAPHYLOCOCCUS AUREUS COLONIZATION IN ELDERLY PATIENTS UPON HOSPITAL ADMISSION

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Conflict of Interest: The editor in chief has reviewed the conflict of interest checklist provided by the authors and has determined that the authors have no financial or any other kind of personal conflicts with this paper. Author Contributions: SSH: drafting and revision of manuscript, analysis and interpretation of data. KYN and DWC: collecting and conception of data. YSK and SK: providing intellectual content of critical importance to the work described. HJC: conception of data and final approval of the version to be published. Sponsor’s Role: None.
Association of Chlamydia trachomatis with infertility and clinical manifestations: a systematic review and meta-analysis of case-control studies

Abstract Background Chlamydia trachomatis is one of the sexually transmitted pathogens causing reproductive health-threatening diseases worldwide. However, its role in infertility, particularly in asymptomatic individuals, is not yet definitely determined. Methods For the study, electronic databases were searched using the following keywords; ‘Chlamydia trachomatis’, ‘prevalence’, ‘frequency’, ‘fertile’, ‘infertile’, ‘case’, ‘control’, ‘symptomatic’ and ‘asymptomatic’. Finally, after some exclusions, 34 studies (19 fertile–infertile and 15 symptomatic–asymptomatic) from different countries were included in the study and meta-analysis was performed on the data collected. Results Odds ratios (ORs) for urogenital C. trachomatis prevalence in males in the fertile–infertile group, for infertile and fertile individuals, ranged from 1.3–3.7 and in females from 1.04–4.8, and the overall OR for both genders was 2.2 (95% CI). In the symptomatic–asymptomatic group, the overall OR in males and females was 4.9 (95% CI = 1.1–21.7) and 3.3 (95% CI = 1.7–6.3), respectively. In all of the analyses, there were high levels of heterogeneity (I2 >50%, p-value <0.05) and, except for the females in the symptomatic–asymptomatic group, neither Egger’s tests nor Begg’s tests were statistically significant for publication bias. Conclusions C. trachomatis can impact on the potential for fertility and cause clinical manifestations and complications in both males and females. Thus, national programmes for adequate diagnosis, screening and treatment of infected individuals, particularly asymptomatic ones, seem to be necessary.
Word Sense Disambiguation based on term to term similarity in a context space

This paper describes the exemplar based approach presented by UNED at Senseval-3. Instead of representing contexts as bags of terms and defining a similarity measure between contexts, we propose to represent terms as bags of contexts and define a similarity measure between terms. Thus, words, lemmas and senses are represented in the same space (the context space), and similarity measures can be defined between them. New contexts are transformed into this representation in order to calculate their similarity to the candidate senses. We show how standard similarity measures obtain better results in this framework. A new similarity measure in the context space is proposed for selecting the senses and performing disambiguation. Results of this approach at Senseval-3 are here reported.
Optical characteristics of China Radiometric Calibration Site for Remote Sensing Satellite Sensors (CRCSRSSS)

Duhuang site and Qinghai Lake site are selected to be China Radiation calibration site for Remote Sensing Satellite Sensors in 1996. We have conducted three field measurement campaigns in 1994, 1996 and 1999 and obtained a lot of characteristic data of atmosphere and ground reflectance. The results show that the Duhuang site has a good homogeneity with a low standard deviation of the reflectance which is less than 2 percent at VIS-SWIR range in 20 by 20 km2. The ground reflectance is between 10 percent and 35 percent at 0.35-2.5micrometers spectral range. Atmosphere measurement have shown that Aerosol optical depth at 550nm in two sites is 0.125 and 0.18, which are all small and suitable for in-flight calibration atmosphere condition. The result of Junge aerosol parameter indicate aerosol type in Duhuang is near to desert model and near to continent model in Qinghai Lake. The columnar water vapor is determined by Modified Langley plot approach in 940nm band of sun photometer. The results of it are compared with radiosonde data and different within 10 percent. The diffuse-to-global irradiance ratio by OL754 spectro radiometer is used for the irradiance-based calibration method to improve in-flight sensor calibration accuracy.
Approach-Avoidance Values of Target-Directed Behaviours Elicited by Target-Traits: The Role of Evaluative Trait Dimensions.

Selon l’approche sociale de l’evaluation de Beauvois et Dubois, la signification evaluative des traits appartenant a une personne-cible reflete le comportement, lie a ces traits, qu’autrui a a son egard. Dans cet article, on montrera que c’est la signification d’approche ou d’evitement d’autrui liee a ces comportements qui correspond a la signification evaluative des traits. Mais on montrera aussi que cette correspondance ne s’applique qu’a la dimension “profit a autrui” et non a la dimension “profit pour soi”. Toutefois, cette restriction ne touche pas la correlation entre la predisposition a l’approche ou a l’evitement attribue a un acteur vis-a-vis d’une cible et la valeur des traits qu’un acteur utilise pour decrire une cible. On conclut que les valences evaluatives des traits sont traitees differemment selon qu’elles fonctionnent comme valeurs incitatives a des comportements d’approche ou d’evitement ou comme valeurs expressives. Il est suggere que cette difference pourrait etre attribuee a un effet acteur-observateur.
Phonetic explanations for nasal sound patterns

Universal sound patterns must arise due to the universal constraints or tendencies of the human physiological mechanisms involved in speech production and perception. The way the physical constraints of the speech mechanism leave their imprint on speech, particularly via sound change, can best be understood by likening speech communication to a transmission line with relay stations or “repeaters”, as in Figure 1 (page 290). A transmitter sends out a signal, u, to which noise, v, is added, yielding the distorted signal, w = u + v, which is picked up by the receiver, part of the repeater unit. It is this distorted signal, w, which is retransmitted as the signal, x, sent to the next repeater.
The Virtual Campus Prolog Learning Environment

We will present a Prolog Learning Environment which has been implemented in course of the Virtual Campus Project 1. The Virtual Campus Prolog Learning Environment provides all necessary information a learner needs during his rst steps in programming language learning and ooers error explanation capabilities to facilitate the learning process. The system encourages explorative and self directed learning. In this paper we concentrate on the way the Virtual Campus Prolog Learning Environment detects learner errors and explains them.
Intuitionistic fuzzy topological spaces: Categorical concepts

Coker has introduced the concept of intuitionistic fuzzy topological spaces (X,T ) where X is an ordinary set and T is a family of intuitionistic fuzzy sets in X satisfying some axioms. In this paper I introduce the fuzzy version of some universal constructions, namely, fuzzy products, fuzzy equalizers and fuzzy pullbacks for intuitionistic fuzzy topological spaces. Some results concerning all such universal objects are discussed. Finally, functors preserving equalizers and pullbacks are investigated. 2010 AMS Classification: 54A40, 18A30
Regulation of Motility by the ExpR/Sin Quorum-Sensing System in Sinorhizobium meliloti

ABSTRACT A successful symbiotic relationship between Sinorhizobium meliloti and its host Medicago sativa (alfalfa) depends on several signaling mechanisms, such as the biosynthesis of exopolysaccharides (EPS) by S. meliloti. Previous work in our laboratory has shown that a quorum-sensing mechanism controls the production of the symbiotically active EPS II. Recent microarray analysis of the whole-genome expression profile of S. meliloti reveals that the ExpR/Sin quorum-sensing system regulates additional physiological processes that include low-molecular-weight succinoglycan production, nitrogen utilization, metal transport, motility, and chemotaxis. Nearly half of the flagellar genes and their dependence on quorum sensing are prominently displayed in our microarray analyses. We extend those observations in this work and confirm the findings by real-time PCR expression analysis of selected genes, including the flaF, flbT, flaC, cheY1, and flgB genes, involved in motility and chemotaxis. These genes code for regulators of flagellum synthesis, the chemotactic response, or parts of the flagellar apparatus. Gene expression analyses and visualization of flagella by electron microscopy performed at different points in the growth phase support our proposed model in which quorum sensing downregulates motility in S. meliloti. We demonstrate that the ExpR/Sin quorum-sensing system controls motility gene expression through the VisN/VisR/Rem relay. We also show that the ExoS-dependent two-component system suppresses motility gene expression through VisN and Rem in parallel to quorum sensing. This study contributes to our understanding of the mechanisms that govern motility in S. meliloti.
Bacterial Endocarditis With Aortic Regurgitation: Implications of Embolism

&NA; We studied 16 patients with 18 episodes of bacterial endocarditis and aortic regurgitation to learn the frequency and characteristics of systemic embolism. Seven patients had eight episodes of clinically apparent emboli, with a mortality of 43%; in those without emboli there was no mortality. The influences of congestive heart failure, type of infection, and echocardiographic findings on the embolic complications are discussed. The close association among embolism, congestive heart failure, and echocardiographic vegetation suggests that early operation is warranted in patients with any of these features in order to prevent emboli.
Stress, inflammation, and aging.

This editorial provides a summary of the state of research on stress-related changes associated with aging and discuss how factors such as inflammation and sex steroid alterations may interact with psychosocial stress to affect the risk for mood and cognitive disturbance in older individuals. The authors provide an integrated summary of four studies reported in this issue of the journal and views on future direction in stress and aging research and interventions targeting resilience to stress.
Virtual I/O caching: Dynamic storage cache management for concurrent workloads

A leading cause of reduced or unpredictable application performance in distributed systems is contention at the storage layer, where resources are multiplexed among many concurrent data intensive workloads. We target the shared storage cache, used to alleviate disk I/O bottlenecks, and propose a new caching paradigm to both improve performance and reduce memory requirements for HPC storage systems. We present the virtual I/O cache, a dynamic scheme to manage a limited storage cache resource. Application behavior and the corresponding performance of a chosen replacement policy are observed at run time, and a mechanism is designed to mitigate suboptimal behavior and increase cache efficiency. We further use the virtual I/O cache to isolate concurrent workloads and globally manage physical resource allocation towards system level performance objectives. We evaluate our scheme using twenty I/O intensive applications and benchmarks. Average hit rate gains over 17% were observed for isolated workloads, as well as cache size reductions near 80% for equivalent performance levels. Our largest concurrent workload achieved hit rate gains over 23%, and an over 80% iso-performance cache reduction.
The Polyprotein Precursor to the Euglena Light-harvesting Chlorophyll a/b-binding Protein Is Transported to the Golgi Apparatus Prior to Chloroplast Import and Polyprotein Processing (*)

The major Euglena thylakoid protein, the light harvesting chlorophyll a/b-binding protein of photosystem II (pLHCPII) is synthesized in the cytoplasm as a polyprotein precursor composed of a 141 amino acid presequence containing a signal peptide domain followed by eight mature LHCPIIs covalently linked by a decapeptide. To determine the transport route from cytoplasm to chloroplast and the site of polyprotein processing, Euglena was pulse labeled with [S]sulfate, organelles separated on sucrose gradients, and pLHCPII and LHCPII immunoprecipitated and separated on SDS gels. After a 10-min pulse, the pLHCPII polyprotein was found in the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) and Golgi apparatus. LHCPII was undetectable after a 10-min pulse consistent with the 20-min half-life for pLHCPII processing. When pulse-labeled cells were chased for 20 or 40 min with unlabeled sulfate, the fraction of pLHCPII in the ER decreased, and the fraction in the Golgi apparatus increased. LHCPII appeared only in thylakoids and chloroplasts, never in the ER or Golgi apparatus. Na2CO3 extraction, a treatment that releases soluble but not integral membrane proteins, did not remove pLHCPII from ER and Golgi membranes. Trypsin digestion of ER and Golgi membranes produced 4 pLHCPII membrane protected fragments. The Euglena pLHCPII polyprotein is transported as an integral membrane protein from the ER to the Golgi apparatus and from the Golgi apparatus to the chloroplast. Polyprotein processing appears to occur during or soon after chloroplast import of the membrane-bound precursor.
Managing environment models in multi-robot teams

Environment models are the primary matter to autonomous decisions for mobile robots, and also to cooperation within teams of robots that operate in the same environment. The decisions to take within a robot or a robot team relate to motions, perceptions and communications: various types of environment models are therefore required to evaluate and plan these actions. While the literature abounds with approaches to environment modeling using data perceived by the robots, very few work tackle the problem of managing such models within a team of robots. Managing environment models implies first defining the proper data structures and associated mechanisms that allow both their efficient update and use by the decisional processes that require them, and second ensuring the models consistency as the robots evolve. This article presents the definition of a framework dedicated to the managing of environment models within a robot team. It establishes the principles that govern the framework design, and illustrates them throughout some examples.
Splash controllers: game controllers involving the uncareful manipulation of water

In this paper we extend the field of organic user interfaces and introduce the Splash Controller. The main concept of a Splash Controller is that a user interacts with computing technology by manipulation of water in some kind of receptacle. To this end we highlight the possibilities of Splash Controllers, specifically as game controllers. Next, we specify a simple and robust technology for the detection of water. In order to demonstrate the feasibility of a Splash Controller, we additionally present the design and development of one specific Splash Controller prototype.
Production of extracellular aspartic protease in submerged fermentation with Mucor mucedo DSM 809

Fungal milk-clotting enzymes have gained value as bovine Chymosin substitutes in the cheese industry. In this work, the effects of culture conditions on the production of extracellular milk clotting enzymes from Mucor mucedo DSM 809 in submerged fermentation were studied. The maximum activity was observed after 48 h of cultivation at 24°C in Erlenmeyer flasks. The optimized initial pH and shaking speed for enzyme production were 4.5 and 220 rpm, respectively. Glucose at a concentration of 1% (w/v) was the best carbon source for the production of enzyme among the carbohydrates examined (glucose, fructose, lactose, maltodextrin ). On the other hand casein at a concentration of 0.5% (w/v) was the selected nitrogen source in the media formulation. Under optimized conditions enzyme levels reached 130 SU per ml fermentation broth. The inoculum type and size has also affected biomass production and the biosynthesis of the enzyme. The preferred method was the inoculation of the culture media with spores at a total load of 6x10 5 spores per flask. Key words : Milk clotting enzyme, Aspartic protease, Mucor mucedo, Sub-merged fermentation.
EXTENSIVE CLINICAL EXPERIENCE Absence of Increased Height Velocity in the First Year of Life in Untreated Children with Simple Virilizing Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia

Results: In the term group (n 11), there was no increase in height SD score and corrected for target height in the first year of life [0.1 SD/yr; 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.5, 0.3] with a consecutive significant (P 0.001) increase up to 0.9 SD/yr (95% CI 0.7, 1.0). In the premature group (n 3), there was a catch-up growth of 1.6 SD/yr (95%CI0.9,2.3)inthefirstyearfollowedbyagrowthof1.1 SD/yr(95% CI 0.9, 1.5) in the following years. There was a positive linear correlation between bone age acceleration and age of diagnosis (r 0.8). Conclusions:Height velocity and bone maturation are not increased in untreated children with mild forms of SV CAH in the first year of life. After this period there is a progressive increase in height velocity and bone maturation in strong relation to the duration of androgen exposition. This observation has implications for the dose of glucocorticoids to be used in SV CAH patients in the first year of life. (J Clin Endocrinol Metab 91: 1205–1209, 2006)
Playing the Right Atari

We experimented a simple yet powerful optimization for Monte-Carlo Go tree search. It consists in dealing appropriately with strings that have two liberties. The heuristic is contained in one page of code and the Go program that uses it improves from 50 % of won games against Gnugo 3.6 to 76 % of won games.
A 1.5 V 14 b 100 MS/s self-calibrated DAC

A calibrated 14 b current-steering DAC is fabricated in a 0.13 /spl mu/m digital CMOS process. The DAC achieves 14 b static linearity with a single 1.5 V supply, and the core occupies 0.1 mm/sup 2/. Dynamic linearity is improved through reduction of parasitic effects. At 100 MS/s, the SFDR is 82 dB and 62 dB at signals of 0.9 MHz and 42.5 MHz, respectively. Power consumption is 16.7 mW.
The Invisible Role of the Central Office.

T eachers as leaders. The principal as instructional leader. The superintendent as the first instructional leader. But what about the central office staff? How many articles and headlines have you read about central office leaders? I suspect you’ve read very few. You might have noticed some passing acknowledgments. For example, in a recent article on leadership in education, Bolman and Deal noted that “the center mounted a series of studies of superintendents, principals, teachers, and other school leaders” (2002, p. 21, italics added). Are central office staff—the curriculum developers, the best practices guides, the assistant superintendents—no more than “other school leaders”? As the assistant superintendent for instruction in a 19,000-student school system in Arlington, Virginia, I am proud to serve as a central office instructional leader. Despite the lack of attention to their role, the contributions of central office staff members are crucial to the strength of a school system. In this era of standards, high-stakes testing, and increasing expectations of school staff, the role that the central office plays takes on even more importance. What is the leadership role of the central office staff, and why is it invisible? FOCUSING ON PRIORITIES
A note on compact K\"ahler-Ricci flow with positive bisectional curvature

We show that for any solution to the K\"ahler-Ricci flow with positive bisectional curvature on a compact K\"ahler manifold $M^n$, the bisectional curvature has a uniform positive lower bound. As a consequence, the solution converges exponentially fast to an K\"ahler-Einstein metric with positive bisectional curvature as t tends to the infinity, provided we assume the Futaki-invariant of $M^n$ is zero. This improves a result of D. Phong, J. Song, J. Sturm and B. Weinkove in which they assumed the stronger condition that Mabuchi K-energy is bounded from below.
Closing the circle on HIV--or not.

Developments on antiretroviral therapies for HIV infection from the 1995 Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy are presented. Drug companies' investigative results concerning their protease inhibitors are discussed, followed by reviews of the ACTG 175 and Delta study results. Particular attention is given to AZT mono and combination therapy issues. Early viral marker data from ACTG 175, the value of combined marker data, vaccines and herpes episodes boosting HIV RNA, and the issue of when and how to do routine viral load testing are demonstrated. Information showing greater benefits of therapy in well-controlled clinical trials is provided, and a brief history of viral suppression is outlined.
Promoting Emergent Literacy and Numeracy through Quality Children's Literature.

In this case, the action research project began with the question of how carefully selected books could be used to enhance the development of emergent literacy and numeracy in young children. Over the course of the three years, the teachers in this project developed a deepened understanding of how to c o n s c i e n t i o u s l y select and creatively use a very specific category of books that have particular value in promoting c h i l d r e n ’s growth and development in the early years. All of these teachers have subsequently shared their findings with colleagues through a variety of professional development activities ranging from staff meetings to presentations at local, provincial and international conferences.
Timing and deadlock-freeness in Continuous Petri nets

Timing an unforced (discrete or continuous) net model preserves deadlock-freeness, but not the stronger liveness property, in general. The converse is not true, and if the autonomous net model has deadlocks, the timing may transform it into deadlock-free. Under infinite servers semantics, here we investigate the conditions on the firing rates of continuous timed models that makes deadlock-free a given timed system.