Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Caractérisation de la famille des transporteurs de folate et de la bioptérine (FBT) chez le parasite protozoaire Leishmania

Leishmaniasis is a disease caused by protozoan parasites that belong to the genus Leishmania. It is transmitted to humans by the bite of an insect vector and is endemic in over 88 countries, where 12 million people are currently affected and approximately 350 million people are at risk. There is yet no effective vaccine available and treatments rely exclusively on chemotherapy. The compounds used for the treatment of leishmaniasis are limited and most of them are associated with problems such as the high cost of treatment, side effects and the emergence of drug-resistant parasite strains. The discovery of new therapeutic targets for the development of new anti-Leishmania molecules is thus urgently needed. The folate metabolic pathway is a potential therapeutic target and the discovery of a gene family of 13 proteins belonging to the folate/biopterin transporters (FBT) family in Leishmania suggested new therapeutic strategies. With the exception of three transporters (FT1, FT5, BTI), the functions of the other FBT proteins were unknown and the main objective of this thesis was to characterize these transporters and find new functions. The specific objectives of this thesis were 1) to determine the expression profile of the FBT family genes during different growth phases and life stages of wild-type parasites and in methotrexate (MTX)-resistant mutants; 2) to characterize the function of a new member of the FBT family, which was rearranged in sinefungin (SNF)-resistant mutants; and 3) to study the subcellular localization of the FBT family proteins and some members of the mitochondrial carrier family (MCF) in order to identify and characterize the mitochondrial transporters of one-carbon donors. The expression profile analysis of the FBT family revealed that several FBT genes were preferentially expressed in stationary growth phase, whereas only FT1, the main folate transporter, was preferentially expressed in the logarithmic growth phase, the phase where accumulation of folate is the highest. Also, it seems that FT1 expression levels are related to folic acid concentration in the culture medium. Moreover, this analysis revealed that recombination events are involved in the inactivation ofthe transporter FT1 in the highly methotrexate-resistant mutants. The selection of mutants resistant to MTX and to SNF led to the characterization of new members (AdoMetTl) ofthe FBT family. AdoMetTl is the main high affinity S-adenosylmethionine transporter of Leishmania. Subcellular localization experiments were useful for the intracellular localization of three FBT proteins and the mitochondrial localization ofthe MCF proteins.
Adaptive Integral Terminal Third-Order Finite-Time Sliding-Mode Strategy for Robust Nanopositioning Control

This article proposes a novel adaptive integral terminal third-order finite-time sliding-mode control strategy dedicated to motion tracking control of a piezoelectric-driven nanopositioning system. One uniqueness of the reported controller lies in that it generates finite-time convergence along with an inherent chattering-free control action. The model uncertainty involving the hysteresis nonlinearity and unmodeled dynamics is estimated through the perturbation estimation technique. Adaptive rules are established to update the control gains without acquiring the upper boundary of the estimation error. The stability of the presented third-order adaptive integral terminal sliding-mode control strategy has been proved based upon the Lyapunov analysis. It enables the achievement of third-order sliding-mode precision and prespecification of the tracking error boundary. The controller performance is verified by performing both simulation and experimental investigations. Results reveal the fine robust tracking performance of the developed controller for the nanopositioning system in the presence of model uncertainty and external disturbance.
Transcytosis maintains CFTR apical polarity in the face of constitutive and mutation-induced basolateral missorting

ABSTRACT Apical polarity of cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator (CFTR) is essential for solute and water transport in secretory epithelia and can be impaired in human diseases. Maintenance of apical polarity in the face of CFTR non-polarized delivery and inefficient apical retention of mutant CFTRs lacking PDZ-domain protein (NHERF1, also known as SLC9A3R1) interaction, remains enigmatic. Here, we show that basolateral CFTR delivery originates from biosynthetic (∼35%) and endocytic (∼65%) recycling missorting. Basolateral channels are retrieved via basolateral-to-apical transcytosis (hereafter denoted apical transcytosis), enhancing CFTR apical expression by two-fold and suppressing its degradation. In airway epithelia, CFTR transcytosis is microtubule-dependent but independent of Myo5B, Rab11 proteins and NHERF1 binding to its C-terminal DTRL motif. Increased basolateral delivery due to compromised apical recycling and accelerated internalization upon impaired NHERF1–CFTR association is largely counterbalanced by efficient CFTR basolateral internalization and apical transcytosis. Thus, transcytosis represents a previously unrecognized, but indispensable, mechanism for maintaining CFTR apical polarity that acts by attenuating its constitutive and mutation-induced basolateral missorting. Highlighted Article: Apical transcytosis is indispensable for the maintenance of highly polarized CFTR expression by counteracting its basolateral missorting from the secretory and apical endocytic pathways in human bronchial epithelial cells.
Identification of novel RNA viruses associated to bird's-foot trefoil (Lotus corniculatus)

Bird's-foot trefoil (Lotus corniculatus L.) is a highly nutritious forage crop, employed for livestock foraging around the world. Despite the agronomical importance of this resilient crop, the related literature is rather scarce. Here, we report the identification and characterization of two novel viruses associated with bird’s-foot trefoil. Virus sequences with affinity to enamoviruses (ssRNA (+); Luteoviridae; Enamovirus) and nucleorhabdoviruses (ssRNA (-); Rhabdoviridae; Nucleorhabdovirus) were detected in L. corniculatus transcriptome data. The proposed bird's-foot trefoil enamovirus 1 (BFTEV-1) 5,736 nt virus sequence presents a typical 5'-PO-P1-2-IGS-P3-P5-3' enamovirus genome structure. The tentatively named bird's-foot trefoil nucleorhabdovirus (BFTNRV) genome organization is characterized by 13,626 nt long negative-sense single-stranded RNA. BFTNRV presents in its antigenome orientation six predicted gene products in the canonical order 3'-N-P-P3-M-G-L-5'. Phylogenetic analysis suggests that BFTNRV is closely related to Datura yellow vein nucleorhabdovirus, and that BFTEV-1 clusters into a monophyletic clade of legumes-associated enamoviruses. The bioinformatic reanalysis of SRA libraries deposited in the NCBI database constitutes an emerging approach to the discovery of novel plant viruses. The RNA viruses reported here provide a first glimpse of the virus landscape of this important crop. Future studies should assess the prevalence of BFTEV-1 and BFTNRV, and unravel whether the infection of these novel viruses is associated to specific symptoms.
Valuation and cost reduction of behind-the-meter hydrogen production in Hawaii

A 250kW hydrogen electrolysis facility was recently installed at the Natural Energy Laboratory of Hawaii Authority's (NELHA's) campus. This facility that will begin operation in 2020 to produce hydrogen for fuel cell buses on the island to demonstrate of the application of hydrogen to decarbonize transportation. Given the size of the electrolysis station, it has the potential to significantly increase electricity costs for the campus, which is subject to energy and peak demand charges from the local utility. In this paper, we analyze the cost of hydrogen production at NELHA given the rate structure options available from the utility. Production costs are estimated using optimal versus constant scheduling of the facility to meet the buses’ demand. A model of the electrolysis station is used to capture changes in production efficiency over the power range in the optimization routine. The effects of combining the station and campus load versus standalone operation and increasing solar generation are also explored. The analyses surrounding this scenario show the importance of multiple factors on the potential profitability of hydrogen production in behind-the-meter applications and show trends that could have implications for other similar installations.
Etude des mécanismes d'élongation du follicule ovarien de Drosophila melanogaster.

L’elongation epitheliale joue un role preponderant au cours du developpement. Ce processus morphogenetique peut etre decrit schematiquement par trois parametres : le signal permettant d’orienter l’elongation, la force capable de generer le mouvement et le comportement cellulaire associe. Le follicule ovarien de drosophile, initialement rond s’allonge au cours de son developpement resultant en un œuf 2.5 fois plus long que large. J’ai mis en evidence que les follicules traversent au moins trois phases d’elongation successives et je me suis focalise sur la phase precoce dont les parametres etaient inconnus. J’ai determine que le signal venait d’un groupe de cellules situees aux poles par la secretion du ligand de la voie Jak-Stat puis de l’activation consecutive de cette voie selon un gradient depuis les poles. La force est apportee par un gradient de pulsations apicales des cellules dependantes de la voie Jak-Stat generant des forces de traction aux extremites des follicules. L’elongation est stabilisee par des intercalations cellulaires orientees selon l’axe d’elongation et par un gradient de constriction apicale des cellules. Ces donnees permettent de proposer un mecanisme ou un gradient d’activite d’un facteur de transcription induit une elongation epitheliale independamment d’une polarite planaire.
Physical habitat as predictor of fish trophic structure in Brazilian Atlantic rainforest streams

ABSTRACT Trophic structure of fish assemblages is one of the most sensitive indicators of changes in streams environments. Since it is crucial to understand the response of trophic groups to habitat alteration, our study aimed to address this research gap by assessing the influence of substrate composition, meso-habitat variability, and bank stability, on the richness, biomass, and number of individuals of carnivores, invertivores, omnivores, and herbivorous-detritivores. Using an electrofishing device, we sampled 13 Atlantic rainforest streams reaches in a degradation gradient, located in the upper Paranapanema river basin. Sample points were ranked using a physical habitat index. More pristine streams had high availability of twigs, trunks, rocks and boulders in the substrate, great meso-habitat variability, and the presence of roots, trunks, and rocks in the margins. Canonical correlations between habitat characteristics and trophic groups explained more than 90% of data variability. Richness and number of individuals of invertivores increased in more preserved stream reaches, while richness of carnivores and number of individuals of omnivores decreased. These results demonstrate that trophic structure varies according to level of degradation, and that invertivore richness represents the best indicator of fish trophic structure responses to physical habitat alterations in streams.
Aerosol Jet Printed, Microwave Microstrip Ring Resonators for System-In-Package Applications

This article presents the design, simulation, and fabrication of printed microstrip transmission line (TL) and microwave ring resonators using aerosol-jet printing for system-in-package applications. The printed TLs are 8 mm long and their S-parameters are measured over a wide bandwidth ranging from 1 to 26 GHz. Their insertion loss ranges between 0.02 dB/mm at 1 GHz and 0.56 dB/mm at 26 GHz. Ring resonators were designed and printed to operate at center frequencies of 15.5, 17.5, 19.5, and 21.5 GHz by tuning the size of the ring. Variability studies are carried out to evaluate the ability of the printing process to fabricate reproducible devices. The coupling gap is optimized in order to minimize the insertion loss in the ring resonators without compromising $Q$ -factor. The simulations show good agreement with the experimental results. The ability to print both conductors as well as dielectrics for the fabrication of microwave resonators demonstrate the potential for in-package integration of RF resonators for low-cost sensor applications.
How event-based memories change as a function of forgetting and consolidation

Episodic memories are composed of multiple elements, from the people we encounter, the locations we visit, and the objects we interact with. These ‘episodes’ are thought to be stored in memory as coherent event representations and are associated with holistic recollection at retrieval, such that the retrieval of one element is dependent on the retrieval of all other elements from the same event. Evidence for this ‘dependency’ has been shown to emerge from the association between the event elements themselves. Critically, dependency is seen when participants learn three overlapping pairwise associations in a ‘closed-loop’, but not when participants learn only two out of the three possible associations in an ‘open-loop’, suggesting that all pairwise associations between event-elements need to be explicitly encoded for a coherent event representation to emerge. Here I asked whether the associative structure formed at encoding affects how event-based memories are retained over a period of forgetting and consolidation. Recently formed representations are susceptible to forgetting via interference and/or decay, but also undergo memory consolidation; becoming less susceptible to interference and/or decay. As such, retention for an event-based representation will reflect an interaction between forgetting and consolidation. This thesis presents evidence that closed-loops tend to be forgotten in an all-or-none manner, such that closed-loops are more likely to either be retained or forgotten in their entirety. In contrast, open-loops are associated with a more asymmetrical pattern of forgetting as a function of memory reactivation during sleep. Further, the thesis presents fMRI evidence that closed-loops continue to be retrieved in a coherent manner following a period of forgetting and consolidation. These findings suggest that the associative structure formed at encoding has a lasting impact on the coherence of the underlying memory representation.
Social Capital: Theoretical Foundations of Identification and Regulation

The article is devoted to solving the problem of the identification and regulation of the national economy’ social capital as the totality of the structured social and economic relations, based on the mutual informal institutions (norms and values), the compliance of which brings the benefit to the subjects of the relations in the form of the social rent, expressing the size of savings from restructuring of the institutional institutions and organizations on the basis of the clear specification of property rights, creation of the organizational structures, that ensure their effective exchange, comparison and saving of costs, arising in the process. In the basis of the state regulation of the social capital relies the process of the planned development of its main elements – trust, norms, rules, social relations, goodwill, culture. social capital, functions of social capital, regulation of social capital
Towards Personalized Privacy-Preserving Incentive for Truth Discovery in Mobile Crowdsensing Systems

Incentive mechanisms are essential for stimulating adequate worker participation to achieve good truth discovery performance in mobile crowdsensing (MCS) systems. However, most of existing incentive mechanisms only consider compensating workers’ sensing cost, while the cost incurred by potential privacy leakage has been largely neglected. Moreover, none of existing privacy-preserving incentive mechanisms has incorporated workers’ different privacy preferences to provide personalized payments for them. In this paper, we propose a contract-based personalized privacy-preserving incentive mechanism for truth discovery in MCS systems, named Paris-TD, which provides personalized payments for workers as a compensation for privacy cost while achieving accurate truth discovery. The basic idea is that the platform offers a set of different contracts to workers with different privacy preferences, and each worker chooses to sign a contract which specifies a privacy-preserving degree (PPD) and the corresponding payment the worker will receive if she submits perturbed data with that PPD. Specifically, we respectively design a set of optimal contracts analytically under both full and incomplete information models, which maximize the truth discovery accuracy under a given budget, while satisfying the individual rationality and incentive compatibility properties. The feasibility and effectiveness of Paris-TD are validated through experiments on both synthetic and real-world datasets.
Transformer Bushing Thermal Model for Calculation of Hot-Spot Temperature Considering Oil Flow Dynamics

Thermal stress plays a prominent role in the reliability of bushings and contributes to the reliability of power transformers, especially during overload conditions. Thus, exploring the temperature distribution in the bushings is essential. This paper proposes a new thermal model to estimate the hotspot temperature (HST) of oil-impregnated paper (OIP) bushings, based on a modified thermal-electrical analogy model. The proposed model is developed based on the finite element method (FEM) to accurately model all fluid flow and internal convection as well as the thermal conduction mechanism. To this end, convection thermal resistances are defined, and their nonlinear characteristics are calculated for different overloading conditions. The proposed approach is applied on a 245 kV, 800 A OIP bushing to analyze not only the normal loading condition but also short-term overloading beyond the rated current. In addition, the oil flow condition with different load currents and transformer top oil temperatures (TTOT) are investigated. The results show a consistent temperature rise with the typical test conditions with no identified problematic situation. However, during overloading, the temperature rise exceeds beyond the permissible limits recommended by IEEE C57.19. Hence, the overloading of transformers may deteriorate the bushing insulation and reduce its lifetime.
Marketing Intelligence System and its Impact in Determining Strategies of Competitive Positions

espanolEl objetivo de la investigacion es conocer el impacto del sistema de inteligencia de marketing adoptado por la Universidad tal como es, y la efectividad de administrar su informacion de marketing, y su capacidad para lograr una posicion estrategica distinta en el mercado de la educacion universitaria privada en Bagdad. Para lograr estos objetivos, se ha desarrollado un modelo para determinar la naturaleza de la relacion y el impacto entre el sistema de inteligencia de marketing como una variable independiente y las estrategias de las posiciones competitivas de la facultad en cuestion como una variable dependiente. Las hipotesis de investigacion se han formulado y probado utilizando SPSS-22 EnglishThe aim of the research is to know the impact of the marketing intelligence system adopted by the College as it is and the effectiveness of managing its marketing information and its ability to achieve a distinct strategic position in the Private university education market in Baghdad. In order to achieve these objectives, a model has been developed to determine the nature of the relationship and the impact between the system of marketing intelligence as an independent variable and the strategies of the competitive positions of the concerned faculty as a dependent variable. The research hypotheses have been formulated and tested using SPSS-22
Position of cones within cone clusters determines seed survival in black spruce during wildfire

It has recently become clear that the regeneration density of serotinous species within a burned area declines with local fire intensity. It is assumed that this occurs because variation in local fire intensity leads to variation in incident heat fluxes and, ultimately, seed necrosis. We argue here that this same relationship between incident heat flux and seed necrosis is important at the scale of individual plant crowns. Using Picea mariana (Mill.) B.S.P. (black spruce), we show that postfire seed viability increases with crown height, depth into the crown, and angle from wind direction (with the windward side enjoying greater viability). All three effects are what one would expect given the physics of buoyant plumes, interactions of moving fire lines with wake flow around cylinders, and heat transfer in porous bodies such as a tree crown. We conclude by discussing the broader consequences of cone cluster size and global change on regeneration in serotinous species.
New Insights into Inflammation in Atherosclerosis

Atherosclerosis is an inflammatory disease and a pivotal role for inflammation in the pathogenesis has been recognized in animal models and at the molecular level [1,2]. The recognition of atherogenesis as an active process rather than a cholesterol storage disease or a repository of calcium has highlighted some key inflammatory mechanisms [3]. Mononuclear macrophages contribute to all stages of this disease. Multiple lines of evidence have proven a causal role for low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol in atherosclerosis. However, even with intense LDL reductions, cardiovascular (CV) events still occur. Inflammation can explain some of this residual risk. After the first anti-inflammatory randomized controlled trial RCT with RCT with canakinumab proved for the first time that targeting specifically inflammation lowers CV events. With the advent of genome wide association studies (GWAS) some loci closed to inflammatory molecules were consistently associated with atherosclerosis and CV events. Whole exome and whole genome sequencing will come soon, showing new and old loci associated with atherosclerosis. This opens the way to new molecular targets in inflammatory pathways attractive for blocking atherosclerosis even in its early stages. A suite of trials are now pursuing anti-inflammatory therapies in atherosclerosis. In this mini-review recent developments in pathogenesis, pathophysiology, biomarkers and therapeutics are discussed. The role of autoimmunity in atherosclerosis is beyond the scope of this mini-review [4].