Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Postentry Restriction to Human Immunodeficiency Virus-Based Vector Transduction in Human Monocytes

ABSTRACT Cells of the monocyte lineage can be infected with human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) both during clinical infection and in vitro. The ability of HIV-1-based vectors to transduce human monocytes, monocyte-derived macrophages, and dendritic cells (DCs) was therefore examined, in order to develop an efficient protocol for antigen gene delivery to human antigen-presenting cells. Freshly isolated monocytes were refractory to HIV-1-based vector transduction but became transducible after in vitro differentiation to mature macrophages. This maturation-dependent transduction was independent of the HIV-1 accessory proteins Vif, Vpr, Vpu, and Nef in the packaging cells and of the central polypurine tract in the vector, and it was also observed with a vesicular stomatitis virus-pseudotyped HIV-1 provirus, defective only in envelope and Nef. The level and extent of reverse transcription of the HIV-1-based vector was similar after infection of immature monocytes and of mature macrophages. However, 2LTR vector circles could not be detected in monocytes, suggesting a block to vector nuclear entry in these cells. Transduction of freshly isolated monocytes exposed to HIV-1-based vector could be rescued by subsequent differentiation into DCs. This rescue was induced by fetal calf serum in the DC culture medium, which promoted vector nuclear entry.
User-friendly Smartphone App for Heart Rate Monitoring in Sports Endurance Activities - Improving Training Control by Combining New Technologies of ANT+ and Android

In endurance sports training, heart rate represents a useful proportional measure for the current physical effort in a workout. Accordingly, during such exercises, it is advantageous to get monitoring information about the actual heart frequency for having an instrument of controlling the demand level of an activity. Today, the market offers a broad variety of sports computers, which allow a tracking and display of heart rate, but their convenience and appropriateness appear rather limited in terms of an efficient use in daily training. In particular, major restrictions are numerical displays of the in-time measures with tiny letters or an unfiltered print-out of spurious values, since the recording is not always precise, but sometimes disturbed from various reasons. Fortunately, upcoming new technologies like programmable smartphone devices and ANT+ communication standard for sports sensors allow developing new and optimized applications and systems also for sports purposes. In the work here, a convenient heart rate monitor was developed that aims at high user-friendliness in combination with elaborated signal-conditioning for preventing any spurious and misguiding displays. Few simple button presses put the sportsman into the position of performing efficient activities within the desired endurance training range. As result, a system is described that is feasible for easy-to-use and efficient sports monitoring, especially during daily workouts.
Reading emotions after childhood brain injury: Case series evidence of dissociation between cognitive abilities and emotional expression processing skills

Primary objective: A previous study has shown that children with brain injuries are worse than their same age peers at reading emotions. It has not clearly been established that cognitive impairments and emotion processing impairments are dissociable in children and the question of whether emotion-reading skills can be selectively impaired in children after brain injury is explored here. Research design: This study addresses this issue by testing a case series of seven children with brain injuries, who were identified as experiencing emotional or behavioural difficulties, according to a social-behavioural measure. Methods and procedures: A battery of tests of cognitive function and measures that assess ability in reading emotions from faces, voices and eyes was administered to each child. Main outcomes and results: Some cases demonstrate broadly based deficits that affect both cognitive and emotion processing domains, whilst other cases demonstrate highly selective deficits in reading emotions. Conclusions: Based on the profile of results across the cases, this study reports that modality-specific, selective impairments in reading emotional expression can be found in children after brain injury. In addition, the data provide evidence of dissociation between cognitive abilities and emotional expression processing.
Taking Information Systems Business Process Outsourcing Offshore: The Conflict of Competition and Risk

As Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) moves offshore and now includes Information Systems (IS) Processes, there is a need to consider a combination of the two. This article explores the factors that a multinational organisation considered when it â€œoffshoredâ€ its IS business processes to lower-cost destinations. It focuses on determining the driving factors and challenges faced during the offshore sourcing project. A single, in-depth interpretive case study approach was used to explore this research topic. The results of this study show that the organisation under investigation was primarily driven to offshore its IS business processes in order to become more competitive in the marketplace. This was assisted by the organisation reducing its operational costs, and establishing a global presence in many lower-cost locations offshore. A model was developed, which illustrates the interrelationships that exist between these concepts.
Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment

One of the important questions that needs to be answered during a game development process is how to keep the game engaging for a wide spectrum of players and for a long time. The “interestingness” of a game depends on many diﬀerent parts such as the storyline, the right amount of interaction, the attractive presentation, etc. The perceived diﬃculty of the game also contributes to the time that any given player spends playing it. Games that are too easy or too diﬃcult become boring or frustrating fast. To get the diﬃculty “right” the developer needs not only to balance all the game parameters, but also to cater for players with very diﬀerent skill levels. Providing a game with an ability to automatically scale the diﬃculty depending on the current player would make the games more engaging over longer time. While a few commercial games boast about having such a system and the results of several machine learning techniques applied to dynamic diﬃculty adjustment (DDA) problem have been published, to the best of our knowledge it has not been researched as a general learning problem. There is a belief that providing players with a personalised, adaptive experience can sustain their attention and keep their interest for longer [2, 3]. One useful way to create a personalized game is to implement a DDA system. We aim at creating a mechanism to allow developing games that provide challenges of the “right” diﬃculty, i.e., such that players are stimulated but not overburdened. For that, we investigate how DDA can be formulated and solved as a learning problem. A general technique for this problem has natural applications in the huge markets of computer and video games but can also be used to improve the learning rates when applied to serious games. This work
Potential of texture-based classification in urban landscapes using multispectral aerial photos

Multispectral remote sensing application in thematic urban land-use or land-cover (LULC) classification has gained popularity in the recent past. However, as a result of the complexity of urban landscapes and spectral limitations in commonly used imagery, accurate urban LULC classification has often been impeded by confusion of spectra among multiple urban LULC types. The emergence of multispectral aerial photographs, characterised by high spatial resolution and multispectral information, offers great potential for LULC classification. In this study, we hypothesised that textural information using optimum Haralick textural features inherent in multispectral aerial photographs can be used to generate reliable land-cover maps in heterogeneous urban landscapes. Haralick textural feature optimisation and object-based classification were used to discriminate diverse urban LULC types. Grey-level co-occurrence matrix (GLCM) Entropy, GLCM Mean and GLCM Angular Second Moment texture features were used to discriminate different LULC types while the Jeffreys–Matisuta separability analysis was used to identify optimum thresholds for the development of object-based classification rules. Results from object-based classification were also compared to classification output using the aerial photograph’s spectral information. Results show that use of both object-based Haralick textural features and the spectral characteristics on multispectral aerial photographs can be used to generate reliable LULC classes. Classification based on object-based Haralick textural features produced higher accuracy than that based on spectral information. Multispectral aerial photographs using both object-based Haralick textural features and spectral information offer great potential in mapping urban landscapes often characterised by heterogeneous cover types.
Utilization of GAs in order to make game playing much more exciting

Recently, intelligent techniques such as neural networks, GAs, etc. have been studied quite extensively by many researchers and they have been utilized in order to construct various intelligent systems. In this paper, we suggest that GAs could be utilized in order to make game playing much more exciting. In particular, we suggest that GAs could be utilized to find the appropriate point of each card at the COMMONS GAME.
Cellular immunoregulatory mechanisms in the central nervous system: Characterization of noninflammatory and inflammatory cerebrospinal fluid lymphocytes

Dual‐label flow cytometric analysis of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) and blood lymphocytes with combinations of monoclonal antibodies such as CD4 plus CD45R or Leu8, and CD8 plus CD11b was performed in 37 patients with noninflammatory neurological disease (NINDs) to clarify the differences in cellular immunoregulatory mechanisms present in the central nervous system (CNS) and in the systemic circulation. In the CSF of patients with NINDs, the paucity of CD4+CD45R+ and CD8+CD11b+ cells was striking, whereas the same subsets accounted for substantial proportions in the blood. CD4+CD45R− and CD4+Leu8− cells as well as CD8+CD11b− cells increased in the CSF when compared with those in the blood. Seven patients with active multiple sclerosis (MS) and 10 patients with other inflammatory diseases in the CNS(CNS‐infl) were also studied. Patients with active MS were characterized by a consistent increase in percentage of CD4+CD45R− cells in the CSF, whereas an increase of CD4−CD45R+ cells in the CSF was a feature of the patients with CNS‐infl, when compared with patients with NINDs. These findings indicate that the CNS is routinely surveyed by particular subsets of lymphocytes different from those in the blood, and cellular immune reaction in the CNS varies according to the types of CNS inflammatory conditions.
Phospholipase D activity of Vibrio damsela cytolysin and its interaction with sheep erythrocytes

Exposure of sheep erythrocytes to sublytic amounts of Vibrio damsela cytolysin markedly reduced their membrane sphingomyelin content and their sensitivity to lysis by the sphingomyelin-dependent cytolysins staphylococcal sphingomyelinase C (beta-toxin) and helianthin. The toxin was found to be a phospholipase D active against sphingomyelin.
Colobus type C virus: molecular cloning of unintegrated viral DNA and characterization of the endogenous viral genomes of Colobus

The unintegrated viral DNA intermediates of colobus type C virus (CPC-1) were isolated from infected human cells that were permissive for viral growth. There were two major species of DNA, linear molecules with two copies of the long terminal repeat and relaxed circles containing only a single long terminal repeat. In addition, there was a minor species (approximately 10%) composed of relaxed circles with two copies of the long terminal repeat. A restriction endonuclease map of the unintegrated DNA was constructed. The three EcoRI fragments of circular CPC-1 DNA were cloned in the EcoRI site of lambda gtWES . lambda B and then subcloned in the EcoRI site of pBR322. Using these subgenomic fragments as probes, we have characterized the endogenous viral sequences found in colobus cellular DNA. They are not organized in tandem arrays, as is the case in some other gene families. The majority of sequences detected in cellular DNA have the same map as the CPC-1 unintegrated DNA at 17 of 18 restriction endonuclease sites. There are, however, other sequences that are present in multiple copies and do not correspond to the CPC-1 map. They do not contain CPC-1 sequences either in an altered form or fused to common nonviral sequences. Instead, they appear to be derived from a distinct family of sequences that is substantially diverged from the CPC-1 family. This second family of sequences, CPC-2, is also different from the sequences related to baboon endogenous type C virus that forms a third family of virus-related sequences in the colobus genome.
Toxic and antineoplastic effects of l‐asparaginase: Study of mice with lymphoma and normal monkeys and report on a child with leukemia

The toxic and antineoplastic effects of guinea pig serum L‐asparaginase have been investigated. The enzyme is active against early (0 day) through late (24 day) 6C3HED subcutaneous tumors in C3H mice but whole guinea pig serum in the same doses was not at all effective against intracerebral tumors comprising the same cells. Whole guinea pig serum caused no acute toxic effects in mice with small tumors. No toxic effects were seen after administration of a partially purified L‐asparaginase (PPLAFI) in C3H mice with small tumors from 0 to 2 days or in monkeys during 9 days of observation. Profuse diarrhea was observed in mice with massive tumors after PPLAFI treatment, during tumor regression. The effects of PPLAFI are described in a human with leukemia.
The role of blood volume reduction in the genesis of intradialytic hypotension.

BACKGROUND The aim of this multicenter prospective study was to investigate the role of relative blood volume (RBV) reduction on intradialytic hypotension. METHODS One hundred twenty-three patients on chronic hemodialysis therapy were considered a priori normotensive (reference group A), intradialytic hypotension prone (group B), and hypertensive (group C). RBV was continuously monitored, and diastolic and systolic blood pressure (SBP) and heart rate (HR) were measured at 20-minute intervals during three dialysis sessions. RESULTS Intradialytic RBV reduction was -13.8% +/- 7.0% and similar in the three groups (P = 0.841). SBP and RBV decreased during dialysis, with a sharp initial decrease (in the first 20 minutes for SBP and the first 40 minutes for RBV), followed by a slower decrease. The lying bradycardic response before dialysis was less in group B than group A (a decrease of 3 +/- 7 versus 9 +/- 9 beats/min; P < 0.001). When symptomatic hypotension occurred, RBV reduction was not significantly different from that recorded at the same time during hypotension-free sessions (-13.9% +/- 6.4% versus -12.7% +/- 5.2%; P = 0.149). Group, baseline plasma-dialysate sodium gradient, RBV line irregularity, and early RBV and HR reduction during dialysis influenced the relative risk for symptomatic hypotension with a sensitivity of 80% versus 30% for RBV alone. CONCLUSION We found no difference in reduction in RBV in the three groups and no critical RBV level for the appearance of symptomatic hypotension. With variables easily available within 40 minutes of dialysis, RBV monitoring increases the prediction of symptomatic hypotension.
Grid connected photovoltaic systems power quality improvement using adaptive control strategy

In this paper, an innovative adaptive technique for power quality (PQ) improvement in grid linked photovoltaic (PV) mechanism is launched. The novel adaptive technique constitutes the integrated accomplishment of the mighty artificial bee colony (ABC) algorithm and the proportional integral derivational (PID) controller. The major objective of the proposed method is to forecast the adaptive gain parameters for the usual and anomalous scenarios in the grid side. In the proposed method, the ABC optimises the gain parameters of the PID controller for diverse grid power variations by employing the objective function, which is devised in accordance with the error minimisation between the actual grid parameters and set point grid parameters. According to the optimised gain parameters of the PID controller, the PQ of the grid side has been augmented. Thereafter, the proposed method is executed in the MATLAB/Simulink platform and the efficiency in execution is evaluated by means of analysis a contrast with the conventional approaches.
Reading the Fine Print: Information Disclosure in the Brazilian Credit Card Market

Consumer credit regulations usually require that lenders disclose interest rates. However, in the absence of specific prominence requirements, lenders can conceal the interest rate in the fine print while still complying with the law. I examine the effect of such a strategy using a field experiment in Brazil in which a credit card company offered their clients payment plans to pay off their balances. Using randomized contract interest rates and the degree of rate disclosure, I show that most clients are rate sensitive, whether or not rates are prominently disclosed. The elasticity of payment plan enrollment with respect to the interest rate ranges from −0.711 to −0.880. High-risk clients are an exception; these clients are rate sensitive only when disclosure is prominent. I also show that clients are influenced by nudges that favor longer-term contracts. Conditional on enrollment, the proportion of clients who choose a longer-term contract is 40 percentage points higher when a longer-term contract is featured in the advertisement layout. This effect, however, is weaker when stakes are higher.Data, as supplemental material, are available at http://dx.doi. org/10.1287/mnsc.2015. 2281 . This paper was accepted by Wei Jiang, finance.
[Influence and mechanism of a tight control of blood glucose by intensive insulin therapy on human sepsis].

OBJECTIVE To investigate the effect of a tight control of blood glucose by intensive insulin therapy on human sepsis, and to explore the potential mechanism of the intensive insulin therapy. METHODS Eligible patients were randomized by a blinded pharmacist to receive tight control of blood glucose by intensive insulin therapy (maintenance of blood glucose at a level between 4.4 and 6.1 mmol/L) or to receive conventional treatment (maintenance of glucose at a level between 10.0 and 11.1 mmol/L). The expression of HLA-DR on peripheral monocytes was measured in 54 patients by flow cytometry on 24 h, 3 d, 5 d, 7 d, 10 d and 14 d of intensive care in parallel with serum c-reactive protein (CRP), severity of the disease (APACHE II score, SOFA score) and clinical data collection. RESULTS Patients receiving intensive insulin therapy were less likely to require prolonged mechanical ventilation. Tight control of blood glucose significantly reduced the number of days during which leukopenia or leukocytosis and the days with hypo- or hyperthermia (P < 0.05). Hypoglycemia occurred in 3 patients (10.7%) in the tight control of blood glucose group. There were no instance of hemodynamic deterioration or convulsions. Compared with the conventional treatment, tight control of blood glucose also increased the HLA-DR expression of peripheral monocytes, and there were significantly difference on 3 d, 5 d and 7 d (P < 0.05). Whereas it suppressed the elevated serum CRP concentrations, there was significantly difference on 7 d (P < 0.05). CONCLUSIONS Tight control of blood glucose by intensive insulin therapy expedited healing of human sepsis, and increased the HLA-DR expression of peripheral and suppressed the elevated serum CRP. So, it is necessary to use insulin to strict control the glucose levels in human sepsis.
Determination of sulfur amino acids and tryptophan in foods and food and feed ingredients: collaborative study.

Samples of 4 foods, 1 animal feed, isolated soy protein, and beta-lactoglobulin were analyzed by 9 laboratories to determine concentrations of cysteine as cysteic acid, methionine as methionine sulfone, and tryptophan. Sulfur amino acids were determined by AOAC method 43.A08-43.A13 for food and feed ingredients, in which samples are oxidized with performic acid before protein hydrolysis with 6N HCl. Tryptophan was determined after protein hydrolysis with 4.2N NaOH. In both methods, free amino acids were separated by ion-exchange or reverse-phase chromatography. Each laboratory was provided with detailed methods and with sealed vials containing solutions of standards. Samples were analyzed in duplicate, and variation between laboratories was determined. Coefficients of variation between laboratories for the 6 samples ranged from 5.50 to 11.8% for methionine as methionine sulfoxide, 8.59 to 17.3% for cysteine as cysteic acid, and 3.87 to 16.1% for tryptophan. Amino acid recoveries were determined by analysis of beta-lactoglobulin and were based on expected levels of each amino acid obtained from amino acid sequence data. The mean recovery of cysteine was 97% with a range of 88-119%. For methionine, mean recovery was 98% (range 89-115%) and for tryptophan, 85% (range 59-102%). Method 43.A08-43.A13 for food and feed ingredients has been adopted official first action for determination of cysteine and methionine in processed foods. The alkaline hydrolysis method has been adopted official first action for determination of tryptophan in foods and food and feed ingredients.
Feeding practices for captive greater kudus ( Tragelaphus strepsiceros) in UK collections as compared to diets of free -ranging specimens

Diet-related disorders occur frequently in captive browsing ruminants. To assess current feeding practices, diets of 15 captive greater kudus ( Tragelaphus strepsiceros ) from three zoological collections were compared to that of free-ranging conspecifics and current feeding recommendations. Dry matter intake (DMI) varied considerably in captivity from 49.2 to 75.7 g dry matter kg BM -0.75 d -1 . Roughage intake determined DMI; with a low DMI associated with low body condition scores (BCS). Compared to free-ranging kudus with diets of 11.1-14.2% crude protein (CP), only one collection had a diet with a similar CP concentration (13.0%), the other collections providing diets with CP of 15.1-16.8%. Acid detergent fibre (ADF) in the zoo diets was comparable to that in the diet of free-ranging animals (24.7-29.4%), but the latter consumed diets with less cellulose and more lignin. In addition, faecal consistency scores (FS) were positively correlated with dietary CP and faecal nitrogen, and negatively with faecal ADF, indicating that higher proportions of highly digestible feeds caused softer faeces. In total, only four of fifteen captive individuals had normal BCS 3.0 and FS 1.0. These results suggest that diets fed to captive browsing ruminants are too digestible, even in terms of fibre composition. Recommendations for higher CP may be unnecessary. Providing browse and high quality lucerne hay may increase the proportion of roughages in the diet and overall DMI to meet requirements and recommendations. To balance the diet and reduce digestibility, the pellets should have lower levels of CP, starch and sugar, and a higher level of fibre, particularly lignin.