3,922 research outputs found
Analyse d'un succès : A Cheng et son œuvre. Biographie et thématique
No full textNoël Dutrait : Analysis of a Success. A Cheng and his Work, Seen from a Biographical and Thematical Viewpoint.
The publication in 1984 of "King of Chess" by A Cheng, a young author sent to the countryside back in 1968, raised considerable enthousiasm not only in China, but also in Hong Kong and T ai wan, and eventually in the W est. By way of analysing the author's biography and the themes of his work taken as a whole, this article tries to highlight the factors of such a general enthusiasm. It then proceeds to examine how a young author could possibly burgeon out of the cultural desert brought about by the so-called "Cultural" Revolution, and why his very first work could coincide with the expectations of such a wide audience.La publication en 1984 du «Roi des échecs » d' A Cheng, un jeune auteur envoyé à la campagne en 1968, provoque en Chine, à Hong Kong et à Taiwan, puis en Occident, un enthousiasme général. A travers une étude de la biographie de l'auteur et des thèmes de l'ensemble de son œuvre, l'article met en valeur les éléments qui ont entraîné cet enthousiasme. Puis, il tente d'analyser comment un jeune écrivain a pu apparaître après le désert culturel institué par la Révolution dite «culturelle » et pourquoi sa première œuvre a aussitôt correspondu à l'attente d'un large public.Dutrait Noël. Analyse d'un succès : A Cheng et son œuvre. Biographie et thématique. In: Études chinoises, vol. 11, n°2, Automne 1992. pp. 35-75
DNA fusion gene vaccination mobilizes effective anti-leukemic cytotoxic T lymphocytes from a tolerized repertoire
No full textThe majority of known human tumor-associated antigens derive from non-mutated self proteins. T cell tolerance, essential to prevent autoimmunity, must therefore be cautiously circumvented to generate cytotoxic T cell responses against these targets. Our strategy uses DNA fusion vaccines to activate high levels of peptide-specific CTL. Key foreign sequences from tetanus toxin activate tolerance-breaking CD4+ T cell help. Candidate MHC class Ibinding tumor peptide sequences are fused to the C terminus for optimal processing and presentation. To model performance against a leukemia-associated antigen in a tolerized setting, we constructed a fusion vaccine encoding an immunodominant CTL epitopederived from Friend murine leukemia virus gag protein (FMuLVgag) and vaccinated tolerant FMuLVgag-transgenic (gag-Tg) mice. Vaccination with the construct induced epitopespecificIFN-c-producing CD8+ T cells in normal and gag-Tg mice. The frequency and avidity of activated cells were reduced in gag-Tg mice, and no autoimmune injury resulted. However, these CD8+ T cells did exhibit gag-specific cytotoxicity in vitro and in vivo. Also, epitope-specific CTL killed FBL-3 leukemia cells expressing endogenous FMuLVgag antigen and protected against leukemia challenge in vivo. These results demonstrate a simple strategy to engage anti-microbial T cell help to activate epitope-specific polyclonal CD8+ T cell responses from a residual tolerized repertoire
Optimal design of simulation experiments with nearly saturated queues
No full textSimulation Models;Interpolation;Queueing Network;Extrapolation
T Cell responses to whole SARS Coronavirus in humans
No full textEffective vaccines should confer long-term protection against future outbreaks of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) caused by a novel zoonotic coronavirus (SARS-CoV) with unknown animal reservoirs. We conducted a cohort study examining multiple parameters of immune responses to SARS-CoV infection, aiming to identify the immune correlates of protection. We used a matrix of overlapping peptides spanning whole SARS-CoV proteome to determine T cell responses from 128 SARS convalescent samples by ex vivo IFN-γ ELISPOT assays. Approximately 50% of convalescent SARS patients were positive for T cell responses, and 90% possessed strongly neutralizing Abs. Fifty-five novel T cell epitopes were identified, with spike protein dominating total T cell responses. CD8+ T cell responses were more frequent and of a greater magnitude than CD4+ T cell responses (p < 0.001).
Polychromatic cytometry analysis indicated that the virus-specific T cells from the severe group tended to be a central memory phenotype (CD27+/CD45RO+) with a significantly higher frequency of polyfunctional CD4+ T cells producing IFN-γ, TNF-α, and IL-2, and CD8+ T cells producing IFN-γ, TNF-α, and CD107a (degranulation), as compared with the mild-moderate group. Strong T cell responses correlated significantly (p < 0.05) with higher neutralizing Ab. The serum cytokine profile during acute infection indicated a significant elevation of innate immune responses. Increased Th2 cytokines were observed in patients with fatal infection. Our study provides a roadmap for the immunogenicity of SARS-CoV and types of immune responses that may be responsible for the virus clearance, and should serve as a benchmark for SARS-CoV vaccine design and evaluation
Benchmarking aerodynamic prediction of unsteady rotor aerodynamics of active flaps on wind turbine blades using ranging fidelity tools
No full textSimulations of a stiff rotor configuration of the DTU 10MW Reference Wind Turbine are performed in order to assess the impact of prescribed flap motion on the aerodynamic loads on a blade sectional and rotor integral level. Results of the engineering models used by DTU (HAWC2), TUDelft (Bladed) and NTUA (hGAST) are compared to the CFD predictions of USTUTT-IAG (FLOWer). Results show fairly good comparison in terms of axial loading, while alignment of tangential and drag-related forces across the numerical codes needs to be improved, together with unsteady corrections associated with rotor wake dynamics. The use of a new wake model in HAWC2 shows considerable accuracy improvements.Team Raf Van de Pla
Strategies to reduce mortality from bacterial sepsis in adults in developing countries
No full textCitation: Cheng, A. C. et al. (2008). 'Strategies to reduce mortality from bacterial sepsis in adults in developing countries', PLoS Medicine, 5(8), e175. [Available at http://medicine.plosjournals.org]. © 2008 Cheng et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited
[[alternative]]Leisure Activities Participation of Junior High School Students in Taoyuan City And County
No full text[[abstract]]This study aims to understand what kind of leisure activities junior high school students actually participate in, what kind of activities they want to participate in, and what affects their participating of leisure activities. It also discusses the differences of leisure activities participation under different variants.
The research subjects are 1776 junior high school students registered in the second semester of year 2001 in Taoyuan City and County. To conduct the research, the author designed the survey “Questionnaire on Leisure Activities Participation of Junior High School Students in Taoyuan City And County.” The collected data were analyzed by means of statistical methods, including descriptive statistics, t-test, and one-way ANOVA. It was shown that:
1. Activities in which students actually participate most are entertainment-oriented, extreme-oriented, and popular-oriented ones. Among them the top five activities are watching TV(video, DVD), computer, basketball, video games, and shopping.
2. Activities which students want to participate in most are entertainment-oriented, and extreme-oriented ones. Among them the top five activities are watching TV(video, DVD), computer, video games, basketball, and shopping.
3. Obstacles affecting students’ participating of leisure activities most is personal obstacles. Among them the main factors are not having time or not having proper time, too much study and too much pressure from examination.
4. Sex and grade etc. important variants show obvious difference in students’ participation of leisure activities.
Yaw-misalignment and its impact on wind turbine loads and wind farm power output
No full textTo make wind energy cost competitive with traditional resources, wind turbines are commonly placed in groups. Aerodynamic interaction between the turbines causes sub-optimal energy production. A control strategy to mitigate these losses is by redirecting the wake by yaw misalignment. This paper aims to assess the influence of load variations of the rotor due to partial wake overlap and presents a combined optimization of the power and loads using wake redirection. For this purpose, we design a computational framework which computes the wind farm power production and the wind turbine rotor loads based on the yaw settings. The simulation results show that partial wake overlap can significantly increase asymmetric loading of the rotor disk and that yaw misalignment is beneficial in situations where the wake can be sufficiently directed away from the downstream turbine.Team Raf Van de Pla
The development and characterization of a 60K SNP chip for chicken
No full textAbstract Background In livestock species like the chicken, high throughput single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) genotyping assays are increasingly being used for whole genome association studies and as a tool in breeding (referred to as genomic selection). To be of value in a wide variety of breeds and populations, the success rate of the SNP genotyping assay, the distribution of the SNP across the genome and the minor allele frequencies (MAF) of the SNPs used are extremely important. Results We describe the design of a moderate density (60k) Illumina SNP BeadChip in chicken consisting of SNPs known to be segregating at high to medium minor allele frequencies (MAF) in the two major types of commercial chicken (broilers and layers). This was achieved by the identification of 352,303 SNPs with moderate to high MAF in 2 broilers and 2 layer lines using Illumina sequencing on reduced representation libraries. To further increase the utility of the chip, we also identified SNPs on sequences currently not covered by the chicken genome assembly (Gallus_gallus-2.1). This was achieved by 454 sequencing of the chicken genome at a depth of 12x and the identification of SNPs on 454-derived contigs not covered by the current chicken genome assembly. In total we added 790 SNPs that mapped to 454-derived contigs as well as 421 SNPs with a position on Chr_random of the current assembly. The SNP chip contains 57,636 SNPs of which 54,293 could be genotyped and were shown to be segregating in chicken populations. Our SNP identification procedure appeared to be highly reliable and the overall validation rate of the SNPs on the chip was 94%. We were able to map 328 SNPs derived from the 454 sequence contigs on the chicken genome. The majority of these SNPs map to chromosomes that are already represented in genome build Gallus_gallus-2.1.0. Twenty-eight SNPs were used to construct two new linkage groups most likely representing two micro-chromosomes not covered by the current genome assembly. Conclusions The high success rate of the SNPs on the Illumina chicken 60K Beadchip emphasizes the power of Next generation sequence (NGS) technology for the SNP identification and selection step. The identification of SNPs from sequence contigs derived from NGS sequencing resulted in improved coverage of the chicken genome and the construction of two new linkage groups most likely representing two chicken micro-chromosomes.</p
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