Enhanced light trapping using plasmonic nanoparticles

International audiencePlasmonics is a new light trapping method used in photovoltaic (PV) solar cells. A significant enhancement of the scattered and absorbed incident light due to the use of silver nanoparticles (Ag-NPs) was observed, which yield to the exaltation of the electromagnetic field in the vicinity of these NPs. In this context, we investigate optically and morphologically the effect of the NPs size dependence on the localized surface plasmon resonance. Extinction, absorption and scattering cross sections are calculated using Mie theory

Generating acceptable Arabic Core Vocabularies and Symbols for AAC users

This paper discusses the development of an Arabic Symbol Dictionary for Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) users, their families, carers, therapists and teachers as well as those who may benefit from the use of symbols to enhance literacy skills. With a requirement for a bi-lingual dictionary, a vocabulary list analyzer has been developed to evaluate similarities and differences in word frequencies from a range of word lists in order to collect suitable AAC lexical entries. An online bespoke symbol management has been created to hold the lexical entries alongside specifically designed symbols which are then accepted via a voting system using a series of criteria. Results to date have highlighted how successful these systems can be when encouraging participation along with the need for further research into the development of personalised context sensitive core vocabularies

Overview of the CLEF-2018 CheckThat! Lab on Automatic Identification and Verification of Political Claims. Task 1: Check-Worthiness

We present an overview of the CLEF-2018 CheckThat! Lab on Automatic Identification and Verification of Political Claims, with focus on Task 1: Check-Worthiness. The task asks to predict which claims in a political debate should be prioritized for fact-checking. In particular, given a debate or a political speech, the goal was to produce a ranked list of its sentences based on their worthiness for fact checking. We offered the task in both English and Arabic, based on debates from the 2016 US Presidential Campaign, as well as on some speeches during and after the campaign. A total of 30 teams registered to participate in the Lab and seven teams actually submitted systems for Task 1. The most successful approaches used by the participants relied on recurrent and multi-layer neural networks, as well as on combinations of distributional representations, on matchings claims' vocabulary against lexicons, and on measures of syntactic dependency. The best systems achieved mean average precision of 0.18 and 0.15 on the English and on the Arabic test datasets, respectively. This leaves large room for further improvement, and thus we release all datasets and the scoring scripts, which should enable further research in check-worthiness estimation

Overview of the CLEF-2018 CheckThat! Lab on Automatic Identification and Verification of Political Claims. Task 2: Factuality

We present an overview of the CLEF-2018 CheckThat! Lab on Automatic Identification and Verification of Political Claims, with focus on Task 2: Factuality. The task asked to assess whether a given check-worthy claim made by a politician in the context of a debate/speech is factually true, half-true, or false. In terms of data, we focused on debates from the 2016 US Presidential Campaign, as well as on some speeches during and after the campaign (we also provided translations in Arabic), and we relied on comments and factuality judgments from factcheck.org and snopes.com, which we further refined manually. A total of 30 teams registered to participate in the lab, and five of them actually submitted runs. The most successful approaches used by the participants relied on the automatic retrieval of evidence from the Web. Similarities and other relationships between the claim and the retrieved documents were used as input to classifiers in order to make a decision. The best-performing official submissions achieved mean absolute error of .705 and .658 for the English and for the Arabic test sets, respectively. This leaves plenty of room for further improvement, and thus we release all datasets and the scoring scripts, which should enable further research in fact-checking

Overview of the CLEF-2018 checkthat! lab on automatic identification and verification of political claims

We present an overview of the CLEF-2018 CheckThat! Lab on Automatic Identification and Verification of Political Claims. In its starting year, the lab featured two tasks. Task 1 asked to predict which (potential) claims in a political debate should be prioritized for fact-checking; in particular, given a debate or a political speech, the goal was to produce a ranked list of its sentences based on their worthiness for fact-checking. Task 2 asked to assess whether a given check-worthy claim made by a politician in the context of a debate/speech is factually true, half-true, or false. We offered both tasks in English and in Arabic. In terms of data, for both tasks, we focused on debates from the 2016 US Presidential Campaign, as well as on some speeches during and after the campaign (we also provided translations in Arabic), and we relied on comments and factuality judgments from factcheck.org and snopes.com, which we further refined manually. A total of 30 teams registered to participate in the lab, and 9 of them actually submitted runs. The evaluation results show that the most successful approaches used various neural networks (esp. for Task 1) and evidence retrieval from the Web (esp. for Task 2). We release all datasets, the evaluation scripts, and the submissions by the participants, which should enable further research in both check-worthiness estimation and automatic claim verification

Jacobi Polynomials as su(2, 2) Unitary Irreducible Representation

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T-cell subpopulations αβ and γδ in cord blood of very preterm infants : The influence of intrauterine infection

Open Access: This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits any use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and the source are creditedPreterm infants are very susceptible to infections. Immune response mechanisms in this group of patients and factors that influence cord blood mononuclear cell populations remain poorly understood and are considered insufficient. However, competent immune functions of the cord blood mononuclear cells are also described. The aim of this work was to evaluate the T-cell population (CD3+) with its subpopulations bearing T-cell receptor (TCR) αβ or TCR γδ in the cord blood of preterm infants born before 32 weeks of gestation by mothers with or without an intrauterine infection. Being a pilot study, it also aimed at feasibility check and assessment of an expected effect size. The cord blood samples of 46 infants age were subjected to direct immunofluorescent staining with monoclonal antibodies and then analyzed by flow cytometry. The percentage of CD3+ cells in neonates born by mothers with diagnosis of intrauterine infection was significantly lower than in neonates born by mothers without infection (p = 0.005; Mann-Whitney U test). The number of cells did not differ between groups. Infection present in the mother did not have an influence on the TCR αβ or TCR γδ subpopulations. Our study contributes to a better understanding of preterm infants' immune mechanisms, and sets the stage for further investigations.Peer reviewedFinal Published versio

B-cell-specific checkpoint molecules that regulate anti-tumour immunity.

The role of B cells in anti-tumour immunity is still debated and, accordingly, immunotherapies have focused on targeting T and natural killer cells to inhibit tumour growth1,2. Here, using high-throughput flow cytometry as well as bulk and single-cell RNA-sequencing and B-cell-receptor-sequencing analysis of B cells temporally during B16F10 melanoma growth, we identified a subset of B cells that expands specifically in the draining lymph node over time in tumour-bearing mice. The expanding B cell subset expresses the cell surface molecule T cell immunoglobulin and mucin domain 1 (TIM-1, encoded by Havcr1) and a unique transcriptional signature, including multiple co-inhibitory molecules such as PD-1, TIM-3, TIGIT and LAG-3. Although conditional deletion of these co-inhibitory molecules on B cells had little or no effect on tumour burden, selective deletion of Havcr1 in B cells both substantially inhibited tumour growth and enhanced effector T cell responses. Loss of TIM-1 enhanced the type 1 interferon response in B cells, which augmented B cell activation and increased antigen presentation and co-stimulation, resulting in increased expansion of tumour-specific effector T cells. Our results demonstrate that manipulation of TIM-1-expressing B cells enables engagement of the second arm of adaptive immunity to promote anti-tumour immunity and inhibit tumour growth

Dendritic Cells Transfected with scFv from Mab 7.B12 Mimicking Original Antigen gp43 Induces Protection against Experimental Paracoccidioidomycosis

Paracoccidioidomycosis (PCM), endemic in Latin America, is a progressive systemic mycosis caused by Paracoccidioides brasiliensis (P. brasiliensis), which primarily attacks lung tissue. Dendritic cells (DCs) are able to initiate a response in naïve T cells, and they also participate in Th-cell education. Furthermore, these cells have been used for therapy in several disease models. Here we transfected DCs with a plasmid (pMAC/PS-scFv) encoding a single chain variable fragment (scFv) of an anti-Id antibody that is capable of mimicking gp43, the main antigenic component of P. brasiliensis. First, Balb/c mice were immunized subcutaneously with pMAC/PS-scFv and, after seven days, scFv protein was presented to the regional lymph nodes cells. Moreover, we showed that the DCs transfected with scFv were capable of efficiently activating proliferation of total lymph node cells and inducing a decrease in lung infection. Therefore, our results suggested that the use of scFv-transfected DCs may be a promising therapy in the paracoccidioidomycosis (PCM) model

Neonatal CD8 T-cell Hierarchy Is Distinct from Adults and Is Influenced by Intrinsic T cell Properties in Respiratory Syncytial Virus Infected Mice

Following respiratory syncytial virus infection of adult CB6F1 hybrid mice, a predictable CD8+ T cell epitope hierarchy is established with a strongly dominant response to a Kd-restricted peptide (SYIGSINNI) from the M2 protein. The response to KdM282-90 is ∼5-fold higher than the response to a subdominant epitope from the M protein (NAITNAKII, DbM187-195). After infection of neonatal mice, a distinctly different epitope hierarchy emerges with codominant responses to KdM282-90 and DbM187-195. Adoptive transfer of naïve CD8+ T cells from adults into congenic neonates prior to infection indicates that intrinsic CD8+ T cell factors contribute to age-related differences in hierarchy. Epitope-specific precursor frequency differs between adults and neonates and influences, but does not predict the hierarchy following infection. Additionally, dominance of KdM282-90 –specific cells does not correlate with TdT activity. Epitope-specific Vβ repertoire usage is more restricted and functional avidity is lower in neonatal mice. The neonatal pattern of codominance changes after infection at 10 days of age, and rapidly shifts to the adult pattern of extreme KdM282- 90 -dominance. Thus, the functional properties of T cells are selectively modified by developmental factors in an epitope-specific and age-dependent manner