Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Nucleic Acid Immunity in the Pathogenesis of Cutaneous Lupus Erythematosus

Cutaneous lupus erythematosus can be a devastating painful and mutilating disease that is associated with an inflammatory response in the skin driven by type I interferon activation. Clearance defects in the extra- and intracellular space lead to an enhanced prevalence of nucleic acids that represent danger signals for the innate immune system. Self nucleic acids can stimulate DNA and RNA sensors that have originally evolved to ensure viral defense. Their activation can induce a type I interferon dominated response in resident skin cells, macrophages and dendritic cells that subsequently progresses to adaptive immune stimulation. The genetic exploration of rare monogenic type I interferon driven diseases helped to identify these pathogenic concepts. Based on a genetic susceptibility lupus patients are more vulnerable to environmental trigger factors such as UV-irradiation that can provoke inflammation with local tissue destruction and eventually systemic disease. Understanding of these pathogenic concepts is a prerequisite for development of targeted therapies.
Hydrostatic Pressure Helps to Cultivate an Original Anaerobic Bacterium From the Atlantis Massif Subseafloor (IODP Expedition 357): Petrocella atlantisensis gen. nov. sp. nov.

Rock-hosted subseafloor habitats are very challenging for life, and current knowledge about microorganisms inhabiting such lithic environments is still limited. This study explored the cultivable microbial diversity in anaerobic enrichment cultures from cores recovered during the International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP) Expedition 357 from the Atlantis Massif (Mid-Atlantic Ridge, 30°N). 16S rRNA gene survey of enrichment cultures grown at 10–25°C and pH 8.5 showed that Firmicutes and Proteobacteria were generally dominant. However, cultivable microbial diversity significantly differed depending on incubation at atmospheric pressure (0.1 MPa), or hydrostatic pressures (HP) mimicking the in situ pressure conditions (8.2 or 14.0 MPa). An original, strictly anaerobic bacterium designated 70B-AT was isolated from core M0070C-3R1 (1150 meter below sea level; 3.5 m below seafloor) only from cultures performed at 14.0 MPa. This strain named Petrocella atlantisensis is a novel species of a new genus within the newly described family Vallitaleaceae (order Clostridiales, phylum Firmicutes). It is a mesophilic, moderately halotolerant and piezophilic chemoorganotroph, able to grow by fermentation of carbohydrates and proteinaceous compounds. Its 3.5 Mb genome contains numerous genes for ABC transporters of sugars and amino acids, and pathways for fermentation of mono- and di-saccharides and amino acids were identified. Genes encoding multimeric [FeFe] hydrogenases and a Rnf complex form the basis to explain hydrogen and energy production in strain 70B-AT. This study outlines the importance of using hydrostatic pressure in culture experiments for isolation and characterization of autochthonous piezophilic microorganisms from subseafloor rocks.
VHDL implementation of pipelined DLX microprocessor

The 32-bit load/store DLX processor architecture is a generic RISC processor designed by Hennessy and Patterson for pedagogical purposes. The DLX processor design abstracts many features of general-purpose commercial processors, and is a well-understood computer architecture, providing a good architectural model for study, not only because of the popularity of this type of machine, but also because it is easy to understand. Utilizing open source hardware such as the DLX core yields the apparent advantage of free-for-all distribution as well as having source codes that are is available and open, allowing for source code modification at-will. This project aims to continue previous work on integration of the DLX core by adding instruction pipelining which was excluded from the previous project’s scope due to complexity and time limitations. Instruction execution speedup and performance was left on the table to be dealt with in future work. Since the DLX microprocessor was, by nature, a 5-stage pipelined microprocessor, it can be expected that the core’s performance on instruction execution can be sped up with a pipeline implementation. Comparison between the non-pipelined and pipelined DLX were also performed to verify this instruction execution speedup expectation.
Evaluation of Quality of Life in Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus Patients Using Quality of Life Instrument for Indian Diabetic Patients: A Cross-Sectional Study

Background: Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) is a chronic metabolic disease with major impact on the quality of life (QoL) in terms of various domains such as social, physical, and mental well-being. Aim: This study aimed to study the factors determining the QoL in T2DM patients. Materials and Methods: A prospective, observational study was conducted in a tertiary care hospital for 6 months. Patients of age ≥18 years and diagnosed with T2DM for ≥6 months (with and without comorbidities) were enrolled for the study. The sociodemographic and clinical characteristics were noted in the self-designed pro forma. The QoL was assessed by the Marathi-translated version of QoL Instrument for Indian Diabetes Patients questionnaire of 34 items and 8 domains. The reliability was validated by Cronbach's alpha. The differences were analyzed by Mann–Whitney U-test and Kruskal–Walis test. Results: Out of 153 T2DM patients, majority were elderly males with mean age of 61.23 ± 11.4 years, married (83%), lower-middle income (57%), urban (51.6%), primary education (46.4%), had diabetes for 5 years or less (42.5%), had positive family history of diabetes (32.6%), and were treated by intensive therapy mainly insulin (41.2%). Statistically significant (P < 0.05) association was found between different domains of QoL and family history, hypertension, body mass index, educational status, marital status, income status, treatment, and complications. The domains of diet satisfaction and general health with the least mean estimates of 7.70 ± 2.62 and 8.25 ± 3.08, respectively, were predominantly affected. Conclusion: QoL is an important parameter in diabetes treatment modality. Different factors affected QoL in diabetics in our study. Further studies are definitely needed for better data generation at national level.
Hydrological hazards in Vhembe district in Limpopo Province, South Africa

This study determined the risks associated with hydrological hazards and vulnerabilities to communities in Vhembe District Municipality, Limpopo province. Risk and vulnerability contribute to poverty, loss of lives and property, environmental and infrastructural destruction, food insecurity and unavailability of water resources. Streamflow and rainfall data were analysed using Log-Pearson Type III distribution and Standardised Precipitation Index (SPI), respectively, to identify return periods and probabilities of occurrence of floods and droughts. Mann–Kendall test was applied to identify trends of floods and droughts. Risk ratings were used to determine risks and vulnerabilities associated with floods and droughts. Standardised Precipitation Index analysis showed that a mild dryness condition dominated dry years in all stations with a range of 22.4% to 59.2% of the years falling within this category. Twenty-five per cent and 75% of rainfall stations depicted downward and upward trends, respectively. Equal number of streamflow stations depicted downward and upward trends. Results generally showed that flood events with return periods of 50, 100 and 200 years are mostly associated with significant and catastrophic consequence levels. This demonstrated high risk and vulnerability of the communities to these hazards. The findings of this study will aid in future planning and development of mitigation strategies associated with hydrological hazards.
TaqMan qPCR for Quantification of Clonostachys rosea Used as a Biological Control Agent Against Fusarium graminearum

Clonostachys rosea is a biological control agent against Fusarium graminearum in small grain cereals and maize. Infections with F. graminearum do not only reduce the yield but, due to the production of mycotoxins, also affect the entire value chain of food and feed. In addition, production of other secondary metabolites such as hydrophobins, also known as gushing inducers, may cause quality challenges for the malting and brewing industry. Sustainable disease control strategies using C. rosea are treatment of infected residues of the previous crop, direct treatment of the actual cereal crop or post-harvest treatment during malting processes. Follow-up of growth and survival of biocontrol organisms during these different stages is of crucial importance. In the current study, we developed a quantitative real-time PCR detection method that amends the currently available culture-dependent techniques by using TaqMan chemistry with a highly specific primer and probe set, targeting the actin gene. We established a sensitive assay that detects the biological control agent down to 100 genome copies per reaction, with PCR efficiencies between 90 and 100%. The specificity of the assay was confirmed against a panel of 30 fungal and 3 bacterial species including 12 members of the Fusarium head blight complex and DNA of barley, maize and wheat. The DNA of C. rosea was detected in Fusarium-infected maize crop residues that were either treated in the laboratory or in the field with C. rosea and followed its DNA throughout the barley malting process to estimate its growth during grain germination. We used a standardized DNA extraction protocol and showed that C. rosea can be quantified in different sample matrices. This method will enable the monitoring of C. rosea during experiments studying the biological control of F. graminearum on cereal crop residues and on cereal grains and will thus contribute to the development of a new disease control strategy.
Invasive pulmonary infection due to Thermoascus crustaceus in a kidney transplant recipient

Abstract The first case of invasive pulmonary infection due to the thermophilic fungus Thermoascus crustaceus in a kidney transplant recipient is described. For the identification of the fungal isolate, morphological aspects and molecular analysis have been used. The case report emphasizes this fungal species as an opportunistic human pathogen and underlines the importance of an accurate laboratory diagnosis for the correct management of the patient.
Human Motion Understanding for Selecting Action Timing in Collaborative Human-Robot Interaction

In the industry of the future, so as in healthcare and at home, robots will be a familiar presence. Since they will be working closely with human operators not always properly trained for human-machine interaction tasks, robots will need the ability of automatically adapting to changes in the task to be performed or to cope with variations in how the human partner completes the task. The goal of this work is to make a further step toward endowing robot with such capability. To this purpose, we focus on the identification of relevant time instants in an observed action, called dynamic instants, informative on the partner's movement timing, and marking instants where an action starts or ends, or changes to another action. The time instants are temporal locations where the motion can be ideally segmented, providing a set of primitives that can be used to build a temporal signature of the action and finally support the understanding of the dynamics and coordination in time. We validate our approach in two contexts, considering first a situation in which the human partner can perform multiple different activities, and then moving to settings where an action is already recognized and shows a certain degree of periodicity. In the two contexts we address different challenges. In the first one, working in batch on a dataset collecting videos of a variety of cooking activities, we investigate whether the action signature we compute could facilitate the understanding of which type of action is occurring in front of the observer, with tolerance to viewpoint changes. In the second context, we evaluate online on the robot iCub the capability of the action signature in providing hints to establish an actual temporal coordination during the interaction with human participants. In both cases, we show promising results that speak in favor of the potentiality of our approach.
[SAMHD1 deprives HIV of nucleotides, essential for viral DNA synthesis].

> Trente-cinq millions de personnes sont infectees dans le monde par les virus de l’immunodeficience humaine VIH-1 et VIH-2, responsables du Sida (syndrome d’immunodeficience acquise). Les cibles cellulaires de l’infection par ces virus sont principalement les macrophages, les cellules dendritiques et les lymphocytes T qui expriment le recepteur CD4. Ces cellules presentent une susceptibilite differente a l’infection en fonction de l’expression de facteurs cellulaires, appeles facteurs de restriction, qui forment une ligne de defense precoce contre le virus. Rejoignant la famille des facteurs de restriction (Trim5, BST-2/tetherin et APOBEC3G [apolipoprotein B mRNA editing enzyme, catalytic polypeptide-like 3G]) (➜) [10], SAMHD1 [SAM domain and HD domain 1] a ete decouverte en 2011 comme une proteine cellulaire bloquant l’infection virale dans les macrophages et les cellules dendritiques [1, 2]. Notre laboratoire, dans le cadre d’une collaboration internationale, a demontre comment SAMHD1 assurait son activite antivirale. SAMHD1 bloque l’infection par les VIH-1 et VIH-2 en reduisant considerablement le taux de desoxynucleotides (dNTP), precurseurs essentiels a la synthese de l’ADN viral [3].
Parallel Changes in Cognitive Function and Gray Matter Volume After Multi-Component Training of Cognitive Control (MTCC) in Adolescents

Adolescence is a unique period in which higher cognition develops to adult-level, while plasticity of neuron and behavior is at one of its peak. Notably, cognitive training studies for adolescents has been sparse and neural correlates of the training effects yet to be established. This study investigated the effects of multi-component training of cognitive control (MTCC) in order to examine whether the training enhanced adolescents’ cognitive control ability and if the effects were generalizable to other cognitive domains. Cognitive control refers to the ability to adjust a series of thoughts and behaviors in correspondence to an internal goal, and involves inhibition, working memory, shifting, and dual tasking as subcomponents. The participants were middle school students (aged 11–14) and randomly assigned to either a training group or an active control group. The training group performed 30 min of MTCC per day for 6 weeks. To identify the training effects, we examined the cognitive performance, regional gray matter, and their relationship. The training group showed modest improvement in a visuospatial fluid intelligence test (Block Design) after MTCC, which was not significant after correcting for multiple comparisons. In addition, the training effect on the gray matter volume (time × group interaction) was observed in the right inferior cortex (rIFC). While the control group showed a typical reduction in the rIFC volume, the training group showed a relative increase in the homologous region. The relative change in rIFC volume was associated with the change in Stroop performance. These results imply that MTCC may affect brain structure relevant to inhibitory control process.
[Beyond usual functions of snoRNAs].

Small nucleolar RNAs or snoRNAs, principally implicated in post-transcriptional chemical modification of other RNAs, were among the first non-coding RNA identified, together with ribosomal and transfer RNA. Lately, snoRNA have been involved in various unexpected functions, which renewed researcher's interest for these molecules. SnoRNA processing into smaller functional RNA species (sdRNA for snoRNA-derived RNA) or into miRNA (sno-miR), snoRNA mediated regulation of messenger RNA alternative splicing or snoRNA links to human disorders, including cancers, are some of the topics developed in this review.
Implementation of a new type DSP PLL using high performance DSP DSSP-1

This paper describes a new digital processing Phase Lock Loop (PLL) implemented on a high performance DSP, the DSSP1. Called the Linear Digital PLL (L-DPLL), the new PLL has linearty in its phase comparison characteristics. It gives fast acquision without increase in jitter, its pull-in range is wider; and its steady state errors and sampling frequency are lower than with conventional PLLs. It also does not require Automatic Gain Control.
Rôle crucial des protéines Polycomb d’origine maternelle dans le développement précoce de l’embryon de souris

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THE DISPLAYS GIVEN BY PASSERINES IN COURTSHIP AND REPRODUCTIVE FIGHTING: A REVIEW

Summary. The components of the displays of passerine courtship fall into at least seven major groups: those of sexual, aggressive, fear, alert, nesting, parental and begging responses. All may occur also during reproductive fighting. However, in order to present the observational data reviewed here it was necessary to classify display components on form alone. In each case distribution through the passerines, and possible origin and homologies, are discussed. The categories used were:– Bill raising. This is characteristic of male courtship and reproductive fighting displays in many groups, but usually only occurs in one of the two contexts in any particular species. There is evidence that it may sometimes be homologous in both contexts. Bill lowering. Most groups possess this component. Its most common origin is probably from lowering the bill to pick up or insert nest material. Wing vibration. In some groups the wing vibration of male courtship appears to be homologous with that of the female precopulatory display, in others with that given when begging for food. Feather raising. One of the main sources for the feather raisings of displays appears to be feather raisings normally given in response to thermal stimuli. Components of the head-forward posture. This posture and that of begging have nearly all their components in common. Possible homologies between them are discussed. Lateral asymmetry. Lateral tilting of the body together with turning of the tail appear to be almost confined to the Carduelinae, Fringilla and the Estrildinae. Components of the female precopulatory display. The passerines can be divided into two groups according to the presence or absence of vertical tail vibration in the female precopulatory display. Song. Passerine song is best regarded as derived from contact calls. It still retains much of the same motivation and is similarly facilitated by androgens. The two extreme conditions (which are connected by all intermediates) within the passerines are those species in which the male sings only when alone and those in which there is so rigid an association between courtship displays (usually a bow) and song that males display even when singing alone. Systematic implications of the distribution of these different components are discussed. It seems likely that the Estrildinae and Ploceinae form a natural group which may be related to the Corvid assemblage. A number of other relationships are suggested, but the data do not allow any firm conclusions.
Shear Stress in Atherosclerotic Plaque Determination

Atherosclerosis initiates at predictable focal sites near arterial branches and curves, where blood flow is disturbed and shear stress is complex. Endothelial shear stress is the tangential stress derived from the friction of the flowing blood on the endothelial surface of the arterial wall. It is a key factor in modulating endothelial cell gene expression and vascular development and remodeling. Increasing evidences suggest that shear stress patterns have a strong relationship with atherosclerotic features. Moreover, variations in the local artery geometry during atherogenesis further modify flow shear stress characteristics, which contribute to the rupture site at the plaque upstream. In this study, we summarize the mechanistic evidences that associate shear stress patterns with determined atherosclerotic plaque features. An enhanced understanding of the relationship and pathophysiological function of shear stress patterns in atherosclerotic plaque features is essential, which may provide early predicti.
Role of the Oral Microflora in Health

The mouth contains both distinct mucosal (lips, cheek, tongue, palate) and, uniquely, non-shedding surfaces (teeth) for microbial colonisation. Each surface harbours a diverse but characteristic microflora, the composition and metabolism of which is dictated by the biological properties of each site. The resident oral microflora develops in an orderly manner via waves of microbial succession (both autogenic and allogenic). Pioneer species (many of which are sIgA protease-producing streptococci) colonise saliva-coated surfaces through specific stereo-chemical, adhesin-receptor interactions. The metabolism of these organisms modifies local environmental conditions, facilitating subsequent attachment and growth by later, and more fastidious, colonisers. Eventually, a stable biofilm community develops, that plays an active role in (a) the normal development of the physiology of the habitat, and (b) the innate host defences (colonisation resistance). Thus, when considering treatment options, clinicians should be aware of the need to maintain the beneficial properties of the resident oral microflora.
Using a Level-Set Model to Generate Artwork from Digital Images

The use of mathematics and computers in the generation of art is an ever growing field. This work concerns the development of an algorithm based on the solution of a partial differential equation that can be used with digital images to generate art-like drawings. This modified model uses a conceptual framework that includes local and global perspectives to determine which aspects of the objects in the image should be included in the drawing. This novel inclusion of both of these perspectives results in drawings with enhanced art-like qualities compared with those utilizing a single perspective.