Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
In vivo maintenance of human regulatory T cells during CD25 blockade

Regulatory T cells (Tregs) mediate immune tolerance to self and depend on IL-2 for homeostasis. Treg deficiency, dysfunction, and instability are implicated in the pathogenesis of numerous autoimmune diseases. There is considerable interest in therapeutic modulation of the IL-2 pathway to treat autoimmunity, facilitate transplantation tolerance, or potentiate tumor immunotherapy. Daclizumab is a humanized mAb that binds the IL-2 receptor α subunit (IL-2Rα or CD25) and prevents IL-2 binding. In this study, we investigated the effect of daclizumab-mediated CD25 blockade on Treg homeostasis in patients with relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis. We report that daclizumab therapy caused an ∼50% decrease in Tregs over a 52-wk period. Remaining FOXP3+ cells retained a demethylated Treg-specific demethylated region in the FOXP3 promoter, maintained active cell cycling, and had minimal production of IL-2, IFN-γ, and IL-17. In the presence of daclizumab, IL-2 serum concentrations increased and IL-2Rβγ signaling induced STAT5 phosphorylation and sustained FOXP3 expression. Treg declines were not associated with daclizumab-related clinical benefit or cutaneous adverse events. These results demonstrate that Treg phenotype and lineage stability can be maintained in the face of CD25 blockade.
User Attitudes Towards Browsing Data Collection

Web browsing data is the foundation of online advertising and can also be used to understand behavioral patterns of web users. This data, however, has also been the source of pervasive privacy concerns. In this paper we probed the sources of the underlying privacy concerns. Through user studies, we investigated the level of concern with URL collection compared to higher-level profiling into interest or preference categories. Consistent with intuition and industry practice, our results indicate that most users do indeed find URLs much more sensitive than the profiles built from them. Interestingly, however, we found that a great challenge in this area is comprehension of what categorization actually means, which is essential to properly make privacy decisions when services collect categories rather than URLs. This paper also investigated whether certain categories may also be a source of privacy concern. We tested sensitivity of a range of categories. Most categories were considered sensitive by relatively few users, and the categories deemed sensitive followed a power-law distribution.
Der immunmodulatorische Effekt von Indometacin und Betamethason auf die Zytokinproduktion fetaler mononukleärer Zellen nach in-vitro Stimulation mit Streptococcus agalactiae und Enterococcus faecalis

Intrauterine Infektionen mit grampositiven Erregern stehen im Fokus der Perinatalmedizin. Seit Anfang der neunziger Jahre wird Streptococcus agalactiae, neben Escherichia coli, als einer der ursachlichen Keime bei schwerwiegenden Erkrankungen des Feten und Neugebore-nen - von FIRS bis hin zur neonatalen Sepsis und Meningitis - beobachtet. Ebenso wird das grampositive Bakterium Enterococcus faecalis immer haufiger in Vaginalabstrichen von Schwangeren isoliert. Auch dieser Keim wird mittlerweile vermehrt bei neonataler Sepsis, besonders unter Fruhgeborenen gefunden. Die Fruhgeburtlichkeit stellt enorme Anforderun-gen an neonatale Intensivstationen weltweit. Zur Verhinderung der Fruhgeburt und Reduktion von Folgeschaden der Kinder werden aktuell Tokolytika und Kortikosterioide eingesetzt. Wahrend Steroide, wie Betamethason eine vorzeitige Lungenreifung induzieren, ist Indome-tacin das einzige Tokolytikum, das nachweislich Wehen uber 48 Stunden adaquat zu hemmen vermag. Befurchtungen bezuglich erhohter fetaler Komplikationsraten durch Indometacin aus fruheren Studien bestatigten sich in neueren Studien nicht. In diesem Zusammenhang fuhrten wir immunologische Stimulationsuntersuchungen von fetalen mononuklearen Zellen unter grampositiver Induktion durch, um erstmalig den immunmodulatorischen Effekt von Indome-tacin und Betamethason unter Simulation eines grampositiven Infektionsgeschehens auf die fetale Zytokinfreisetzung untersuchen zu konnen. Dazu wurde von zehn reifgeborenen Kin-dern Nabelschnurblut entnommen, aufgearbeitet und mit den Versuchskomponenten in-vitro behandelt. Anschliesend wurden die Zytokinfreisetzungen von IL-1β, INF-γ, MiP-1β, IL-8, MCP-1, MiP-1α, TNF, IL-12, IL-6 und IL-10 vermessen. Es zeigte sich insbesondere, dass vor allem die kombinierte Gabe von Betamethason und Indometacin hemmend auf die proin-flammatorische Zytokinfreisetzung wirkten, wahrend das antiinflammatorische Zytokin IL-10 von Indometacin um bis zu 33 % in seiner Expression angeregt werden konnte. Angesichts der eskalierenden Zytokinausschuttung im fetalen septischen Geschehen unter grampositiver Infektion, ist dies eine Wirkung, die bei antepartaler Gabe von Betamethason und Indometa-cin an die werdende Mutter das neonatale Outcome auch im Hinblick auf somatische und neu-rologische Folgeschaden positiv beeinflussen konnte.
Current trends in the management of recurrent malignant melanoma

After apparently successful primary surgery, malignant melanoma can recur in three ways; local recurrence around the site of the primary lesion, involvement of local draining lymph nodes, or distant metastatic spread which may be mainly visceral or subcutaneous in distribution. These three possibilities are commonly termed stages Ila, 11 and III respectively. Prevention of any of these modes of recurrence should be the aim of initial management of the primary lesion. In Western Europe this will almost always be surgical, although some Eastern European centres report worthwhile results with radiotherapy. (Rosenberg, 1976.) Recent detailed clinicopathological studies by Clark, McGovern and other workers have demonstrated that there are three main histogenetic types of malignant melanoma and nodular melanoma (Clark et al., 1975; McGovern et al., 1973; McGovern, 1976). Five year survival figures for these three groups vary, the worst prognosis being associated with the nodular variety. Prognosis is also related to the depth of invasion of the primary tumour at the lime of primary surgery. The majority of lesions arising on the basis of a pre-existing lentigo maligna have invaded only to levels 111 (the interface between papillary and reticular dermis) while nodular melanomas have in general invaded more deeply to level IV or V (reticular dermis, or subcutaneous tissues). Lesions of the superficial spreading type occupy an intermediate position (Holmes, Clark & Morton, 1976). Because of these histological variants, careful consideration of ancillary methods of management in addition to surgery in the high risk groups at the time of excision of the primary tumour is important. This generally takes the form of chemotherapy, immunotherapy or further surgery in the form of prophylactic lymph node dissection. The problem of removal of clinically normal nodes is one which has occupied and continues to occupy many pages in the literature on the management of malignant melanoma. Those in favour of the procedure quote the incidence of tumour positive but clinically negative nodes obtained, while antagonists argue that removal of normal nodes may well be destroying an immunologically valuable barrier to metastatic spread, and also consider the morbidity and even mortality associated with block dissection an important feature. A large trial currently in progress organized by the World Health Organization (W.H. O.
REPRESENTACIONES MEDIÁTICAS DEL RIESGO Y LA INUNDACIÓN EN LA PLATA (2013-2014): UNA MIRADA DESDE LA SOCIOLOGÍA DE LOS PROBLEMAS PÚBLICOS

Resumen Despues de la inundacion de La Plata el 2 de abril de 2013, causada por una lluvia intensa, cuyos efectosestuvieron fuera de todas las previsiones y pusieron de manifiesto la ausencia de estrategias de planeamientoterritorial y las insuficiencias de las redes de infraestructura. Se hizo evidente que el riesgo ambiental, laposibilidad de una nueva catastrofe, se podria llegar a instalar en la agenda mediatica como un problemapublico. El riesgo de inundacion y las inundaciones mismas no son un problema publico construido y atizadodesde los medios de comunicacion, son situaciones que se presentan, cada vez menos eventualmente y quedevienen en problema publico mas alla de su presencia en el ambito de los medios de comunicacion. Como tal,involucra varios de los dispositivos que constituyen comunidad: las politicas publicas, los efectos de disputaslocales y nacionales, las actividades de asociaciones, discursos e intervenciones de expertos, a las universidades,la protesta visible en las calles. Este trabajo propone un analisis del discurso mediatico sobre la inundacion de LaPlata durante los ultimos dos anos, que permitira dilucidar algo del proceso de la construccion del riesgo de lainundacion como un problema publico. Palabras claves: Problemas Publicos, Inundacion, La Plata, Resiliencia, Construccion Mediatica
Laboratory characterization of PM emissions from combustion of wildland biomass fuels

Particle emissions from open burning of southwestern (SW) and southeastern (SE) U.S. fuel types during 77 controlled laboratory burns are presented. The fuels include SW vegetation types: ceanothus, chamise/scrub oak, coastal sage scrub, California sagebrush, manzanita, maritime chaparral, masticated mesquite, oak savanna, and oak woodland, as well as SE vegetation types: 1 year, 2 year rough, pocosin, chipped understory, understory hardwood, and pine litter. The SW fuels burned at higher modified combustion efficiency (MCE) than the SE fuels resulting in lower particulate matter mass emission factor. Particle mass distributions for six fuels and particle number emission for all fuels are reported. Excellent mass closure (slope = 1.00, r2 = 0.94) between ions, metals, and carbon with total weight was obtained. Organic carbon emission factors inversely correlated (R2 = 0.72) with average MCE, while elemental carbon (EC) had little correlation with average MCE (R2 = 0.10). The EC/total carbon ratio sharply increased with MCE for MCEs exceeding 0.94. The average levoglucosan and total polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) emissions factors ranged from 25 to 1272 mg/kg fuel and 1.8 to 11.3 mg/kg fuel, respectively. No correlation between average MCE and emissions of PAHs/levoglucosan was found. Additionally, PAH diagnostic ratios were observed to be poor indicators of biomass burning. Large fuel type and regional dependency were observed in the emission rates of ammonium, nitrate, chloride, sodium, and potassium.
Large‐amplitude bending motions in phenylalanine transfer RNA

Conformational energy calculations on yeast tRNAPhe reveal several likely modes of intramolecular bending, including both hingelike motions (rotations about a discrete point) and distributed flexibility (deformations that bend a double‐helical segment along a smooth curve). By combining these modes of motion, the molecule can be bent from the L‐shaped crystallographic structure to two extremes. It can be straightened into a nearly linear conformation at an energy cost of about 50 kcal/mol, and it can be doubled over to a conformation where the anticodon and the amino acid acceptor terminus are separated by about 40 Å at an energy cost of less than 100 kcal/mol. A bending range of over 100° can be covered for 50 kcal/mol, and we estimate that this value could be cut in half with a minimization algorithm that produced optimum stereochemistry. These energies are comparable to those that would be associated with changes in solvation due to changes in surface area as the molecule bends, indicating that there are no major steric barriers to tRNA flexibility and that variations in solvent conditions and interactions with other molecules may produce large changes in the overall conformation of tRNA.
On Measuring and Modeling Governmental Accounts in Sina Microblog Service

Microblog opens a prosperous cyberspace, where people on the earth can quickly publish and receive information in a tremendously quick manner. Also different organizations including government create accounts in the microblog service in order to interact with the public society. Sina microblog service, as being the biggest Chinese microblog service player, attracts millions of users and organizations. We collect and analyze data from all verified governmental accounts in the Sina microblog service. Then multiple plots around friend count, follower count, microblog count are illustratively presented. It has been found that many verified governmental accounts have been discarded by their owners. Also, the content productivity is highly correlated with the hierarchical level in the realworld governmental structure, besides other typical exponential characteristics.
Characterization of photovoltaic pumping system model without battery storage by MATLAB/Simulink

Under normal operating conditions, the flow rate of a solar pump fed by a photovoltaic array follows the variations of the irradiance. However, the flow rate of a photovoltaic pumping system coupled to a water filtration unit should be constant under a constant pressure. So, the combination of solar batteries with a photovoltaic array is required. This paper presents a specific structure of the P & O algorithm for controlling a boost converter inserted between the photovoltaic array without batteries and the driving motor of a centrifugal pump. The simulation results in MATLAB/SIMULINK with ode23t solver show that blocking of the duty ratio of the control pulses of the boost converter enables to maintain a constant output voltage, even if the irradiance varies. Thus, for a duty ratio locked between 0.79 and 0.9, the output voltage of 236 V is obtained, for a flow rate of 1.08 l/s under a pressure of 5.8 bars.
HIF‐1 modulates longevity and healthspan in a temperature‐dependent manner

The hypoxia‐inducible factor HIF‐1 has recently been identified as an important modifier of longevity in the roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans. Studies have reported that HIF‐1 can function as both a positive and negative regulator of life span, and several disparate models have been proposed for the role of HIF in aging. Here, we resolve many of the apparent discrepancies between these studies. We find that stabilization of HIF‐1 increases life span robustly under all conditions tested; however, deletion of hif‐1 increases life span in a temperature‐dependent manner. Animals lacking HIF‐1 are long lived at 25°C but not at 15°C. We further report that deletion or RNAi knockdown of hif‐1 impairs healthspan at lower temperatures because of an age‐dependent loss of vulval integrity. Deletion of hif‐1 extends life span modestly at 20°C when animals displaying the vulval integrity defect are censored from the experimental data, but fails to extend life span if these animals are included. Knockdown of hif‐1 results in nuclear relocalization of the FOXO transcription factor DAF‐16, and DAF‐16 is required for life span extension from deletion of hif‐1 at all temperatures regardless of censoring.
Domain-polymorphic language for privacy-preserving applications

We present SecreC, a programming language for specifying privacy-preserving applications using a mix of techniques for secure multiparty computation. Building on the concept of protection domain as an abstraction of resources used to ensure the privacy of data, the SecreC language allows the specification of protection domains for different pieces of data, and the specification of the computation in domain-polymorphic manner. We have implemented the compiler for the language, integrated it with the existing SMC framework Sharemind, and are currently using it for new privacy-preserving applications.
Achievable Rates in Uplink Massive MIMO Systems With Pilot Hopping

Massive MIMO promises large spectral and power efficiency gains. However, pilot contamination limits these aspired gains. In this paper, we propose a structured, i.e., non-random, pilot hopping and a weighted moving average channel estimation for time-varying massive MIMO systems. The proposed algorithm diversifies the contaminating (interfering) sources, such that all the users enjoy the hopping advantages. We analyze the performance of multi-cell network, where the base stations perform matched filtering or zero-forcing for data detection. Using polynomial expansion approximations, we obtain achievable rates that are tight even at finite (not very large) number of antennas. It is shown that the spectral efficiency gain achieved by pilot hopping is not a monotonic function of the pilot reuse factor $\beta $ in some cases and, therefore, brings to attention that careful cell planning is required when applying pilot hopping. Moreover, the proposed algorithm involves a weighted moving average that uses the previously obtained channel estimates (of the preceding blocks) if they are correlated with the current one. Due to the massive MIMO properties, the algorithm is robust to channel time-variations and can be used with any previously proposed channel estimation method.
[Guidelines and jurisprudence: advice, guidance or regulation?].

Proliferation of clinical guidelines has given rise to a number of concerns about the status of clinical advisory statements. Are guidelines advisory or mandatory? What regulatory functions do guidelines serve; do they allow clinical discretion a large enough role? Relationships between legislation and guidelines, and the way courts go about determining the legal status of guidelines, are explained. The following questions in the context of the law of negligence are addressed. Do doctors who deviate from guidelines place themselves at increased risk of being found liable in negligence if patients suffer injury as a result? Could compliance with guidelines protect health care workers from liability in such circumstances? What legal responsibility do the developers and issuers of guidelines have if their guidance is found to be faulty? Common law cases featuring clinical guidelines or protocols have been identified from the databese Lexis, which searches the full text of the transcripts and reports of court cases in UK, Commonwealth and United States jurisdictions. Secondary literature, identified from the bibliography of clinical guidelines maintained by the Department of Health Services Research at the University of Aberdeen (assembled from DHSS-DATA, Embase, Grateful Med, Medline and SIGLE) has also been consulted. The legal status of a guideline turns on whether its development and application have statutory backing, and whether the guideline embodies clinical practices accepted as proper by a responsible body of doctors. The mandatory effects of guidelines can be gauged, to some extent, by the sanctions that apply in the event of non-compliance. US courts have ruled that guideline developers can be held liable for faulty guidelines, and that doctors cannot pass off their liability by claiming that adherence to guidelines has corrupted clinical judgement. Protocols and guidelines provide the courts with examples of clinical standards across a wide range of medical practice. As guidelines proliferate, so they will increasingly be used in court. However, adherence to guidelines has not automatically been equated with reasonable practice, and the courts seem unlikely to follow the standards enunciated in clinical guidelines without critically evaluating their authority, flexibility and scope of application. What usually is done may be evidence of what ought to be done . but what ought to be done is fixed by a standards of reasonable prudence, whether it is complied with or not.
Chapter 19: Hybrid Fingerprint Verification System Based on Fusion of Feature Extraction and Minutiae Detection Strategy

In this Paper we have presented a Fingerprint verification system based on hybrid approach which combines both the Feature extraction by applying a set of different wavelet families (functions) and minutiae information available in the fingerprint image by fusion rule method. The Core Point (CP) of the input Fingerprint is detected. Keeping the CP in the center,the image of size w x w is cropped and further processing is done with the cropped portion of the image. The cropped portion of the image is divided into four equal parts and each part is decomposed into frequency sub-bands for feature extraction. Minutiae are also detected from the cropped portion of the image. To evaluate the systempsilas rate of FAR and FRR, the DET curve has been implemented which will automatically plot the graph between FAR and FRR of the proposed system. Extensive experiments have been conducted on FVC2002 and Biometric System Lab fingerprint database. The results of this hybrid technique have also been compared by replacing the proposed approach with Gabor filter convolution strategy for feature extraction with 16 Gabor filters. The performance output shows the tremendous efficacy of the proposed system.
E.O.G classification based on fuzzified symbolic representation

This work is part of a study for a 3D navigation task of disabled person in virtual environment. The hardware used is an ocular command device called Cyclope which is based on the measurement and analyze of biological signals that vary with eye movements (Electro Oculo-Graphic, EOG). This paper presents a method to represent and classify EOG signal. The goal is to distinguish Ocular Command Movement which can be detected from pattern of EOG signals. Then, an adapted representation and classification of these patterns allows identifying a particular class of OCM. The proposed method extracts semi-qualitative linear episodes from biological signals. Two membership functions are implemented to transform the quantitative information in the linear episodes to a purely symbolic representation. Finally, the symbolic data is classified with qualitative similarity index.
Improving the yield and quality of tar during co-pyrolysis of coal and cotton stalk.

Co-pyrolysis of Shenmu coal (SM) and cotton stalk (CS) at different blend ratios were carried out in a tubular furnace. The pyrolysis temperature was up to 600 °C at 5 °C/min and kept for 15 min. The results indicated that there was an interactive effect between SM and CS, which increased the tar yield. Moreover, the content of light components in co-pyrolysis tar from all CS/SM blend ratios was higher than that in the tar derived from SM pyrolysis. This interaction not only increased tar yields but also upgraded the quality of tar in the co-pyrolysis process. Compared with the co-pyrolysis of de-ashed CS and SM, the inherent minerals of CS had great effects on the co-pyrolysis tar yield. The analysis results of n-hexane soluble extracted from co-pyrolysis tar by gas chromatography/mass spectrometry indicated that the organic matters of CS had a significant effect on the alkene formation of tar during co-pyrolysis. The maximal tar yield was 13.73 wt% (daf) and the yield of n-hexane soluble reached 11.13 wt% (daf) under optimum conditions.
The Design and Evaluation of the Neutral Posture Chair for Surgeons

A neutral posture chair was designed and evaluated to determine if it was a possible means for reducing or eliminating fatigue experienced by surgeons because of seated body posture during microsurgical procedures. The neutral body posture is defined as the posture found in weightlessness, where the muscle, tendon, and ligament systems acting over the joints are in total balance. The neutral posture chair is a unique combination of a forward-sloping cultivator seat and WI English saddle, with wraparound leg trough support. On subjective questionnaires, surgeons rated the neutral posture chair as being generally superior to a currently utilized surgical chair for general comfort, body-part comfort, and chair features.