325,085 research outputs found
IFPA meeting 2015 workshop report IV: placenta and obesity; stem cells of the feto-maternal interface; placental immunobiology and infection
No full textAbstract not availableM.H. Abumaree, A. Almutairi, S. Cash, P. Boeuf, L.W. Chamley, T. Gamage, J.L. James, B. Kalionis, T.Y. Khong, K.S. Kolahi, R. Lim, S. Liong, T.K. Morgan, K. Motomura, H.N. Peiris, R.A. Pelekanos, E. Pelzer, A. Shafiee, G.E. Lash, D. Natal
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
Diffusive author(s), cohesive author: Analysis of S/N (1994)
No full textThis study indicates the ways in which various aspects of the author(s) are brought forth in Dumb type’s performance art, the S/N production. Previous research has suggested a non-hierarchical organization of Dumb type and the absence of a “privileged author” in Dumb type’s collaborative work, S/N. However, the results that I have investigated from member’s interviews on the creative process of S/N along with my analysis of the recorded images of S/N, indicate a different aspect of the author(s). First, S/N was created through, so to speak, the collective ideas of the members of Dumb type. Further, S/N has at least nine quotations from previous performances, installations, and printed writings, besides the work-in-progress technique. Explicating one of the “author functions” as given by Michel Foucault, each text has plural subjects of the author. However, it has been revealed from members’ interviews that Teiji Furuhashi had a decision-making role in selecting the members’ ideas within the performance. Since then, S/N has had plural subjects of creation; however, Furuhashi is one of the subjects of creation along with the “privileged author.” S/N has plural authors (diffusive authors) yet at the same time, it has a “privileged author,” Teiji Furuhashi (cohesive author)
Building Materials from Colloidal Nanocrystal Arrays: Evolution of Structure, Composition, and Mechanical Properties upon the Removal of Ligands by O-2 Plasma
No full textMinimally parametric power spectrum reconstruction from the Lyman-alpha Forest
No full textCurrent results from the Lyman α forest assume that the primordial power spectrum of density perturbations follows a simple power-law form. We present the first analysis of Lyman α data to study the effect of relaxing this strong assumption on primordial and astrophysical constraints. We perform a large suite of numerical simulations, using them to calibrate a minimally parametric framework for describing the power spectrum. Combined with cross-validation, a statistical technique which prevents overfitting of the data, this framework allows us to reconstruct the power spectrum shape without strong prior assumptions. We find no evidence for deviation from scale-invariance; our analysis also shows that current Lyman α data do not have sufficient statistical power to robustly probe the shape of the power spectrum at these scales. In contrast, the ongoing Baryon Oscillation Sky Survey will be able to do so with high precision. Furthermore, this near-future data will be able to break degeneracies between the power spectrum shape and astrophysical parameters
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
No full textThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
No full textWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
State space modeling of Gegenbauer processes with long memory
No full textAn approximation of a Gegenbauer autoregressive moving average (GARMA) process with long memory using a finite order moving average (MA) representation is considered. The state space form of the MA approximation is developed and the corresponding estimates are obtained by pseudo maximum likelihood using the Kalman filter. For comparative purposes the same exercise is executed with an autoregressive (AR) approximation. Using an extensive Monte Carlo experiment, optimal order of the chosen MA approximation is established, and found it was not very large (around 35) and rather insensitive to the sample size. Further evidence suggests the approximation is reliable for forecasting and signal extraction with periodic long memory components. A rolling forecasting experiment was performed to validate the choice of optimal order of both AR and MA approximations in terms of predictive accuracy. Finally, the proposed methodology was applied to two yearly sunspots time series, and compared with corresponding results proposed in the literature
Author's address:
No full textCan archives of audiovisual TV interviews be used to make authors more visible to students, and thereby reduce the learning gap between native and non-native language speakers in college classes? We examined students in a college course who learned about one scholar's ideas through watching an audiovisual TV interview (i.e., visible author format) and about another scholar's ideas through reading a formal text description (i.e., invisible author format). For the invisible author, native language speakers scored significantly higher than the non-native language speakers on a corresponding exam question (i.e., a cognitive measure), generated more words on the exam question (i.e., a motivational measure), and mentioned the author's name more often in answering the exam question (i.e., an affective measure). For the visible author, the groups did not differ on any of these measures. These findings provide evidence for the idea that making the author visible through audiovisual TV interviews can eliminate the learning gap between native and non-native language speakers. 3 Universities around the world serve students who are non-native speakers of th
- …
