Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
E. E. Just Award Lecture

What started as a game of discovery for a child with a chemistry set has resulted in a lifetime of fulfillment and dedication to science. It is deeply rewarding to continuously let my curiosity ask questions for which there are no known answers. Equally rewarding has been the opportunity to mentor young students and postdoctorate graduates through their formative years in science.
Q A ] 2 7 M ay 1 99 9 Local ν-Euler Derivations and Deligne ’ s Characteristic Class of Fedosov Star Products

In this paper we explicitly construct local ν-Euler derivations Eα = ν∂ν + Lξα + Dα, where the ξα are local, conformally symplectic vector fields and the Dα are formal series of locally defined differential operators, for Fedosov star products on a symplectic manifold (M, ω) by means of which we are able to compute Deligne’s characteristic class of these star products. We show that this class is given by 1 ν [ω] + 1 ν [Ω] where Ω = ∑ ∞ i=1 ν Ωi is a formal series of closed two-forms on M the cohomology class of which coincides with the one introduced by Fedosov to classify his star products. Moreover, our result implies that the normalisation condition used by Fedosov does not have any effect on the isomorphy class of the resulting star product. Finally we consider star products that have additional algebraic structures and compute the effect of these structures on the corresponding characteristic classes of these star products. Specifying the constituents of Fedosov’s construction we obtain star products with these special properties.
The VEGF-Receptor Inhibitor Axitinib Impairs Dendritic Cell Phenotype and Function

Inhibitors of VEGF receptor (VEGFR) signaling such as sorafenib and sunitinib that are currently used in the treatment of malignant diseases have been shown to affect immunological responses by inhibition of the function of antigen presenting cells and T lymphocytes. The VEGFR-inhibitor axitinib has recently been approved for second line therapy of metastatic renal cell carcinoma. While there is some evidence that axitinib might interfere with the activation of T cells, not much is known about the effects of axitinib on dendritic cell (DC) phenotype and function. We here show that the addition of axitinib during the final Toll-like receptor-4-induced maturation step of monocyte-derived human DCs results in a reduced DC activation characterized by impaired expression of activation markers and co-stimulatory molecules such as CD80, CD83 and CD86. We further found a decreased secretion of interleukin-12 which was accompanied by reduced nuclear expression of the transcription factor cRel. In addition, we found a dose-dependent reduced activation of p38 and STAT3 in axitinib-exposed DCs, whereas the expression was not affected. The dysfunction of axitinib-exposed DCs was further underlined by their impaired induction of allogeneic T cell proliferation in a mixed lymphocyte reaction assay and inhibition of DC migration. Our results demonstrate that axitinib significantly affects DC differentiation and function primarily via the inhibition of the nuclear factor kappa B signaling pathway leading to impaired T cell activation. This will be of importance for the design of future vaccination protocols and therapeutic approaches aiming at combining different treatment strategies, eg such as programmed death-1 inhibitors with axitinib.
EFFECTS OF HEAT STRESS AND TIME ON TASK ON REACTION TIME 1

Several studies have shown that heat stress caused a deterioration in cognitive performance, and that the magnitude of this deterioration was related to the duration of the exposure to high temperature. Particularly in sustained attention tasks, to which some sports activities could be compared, performance decrements were observed under heat stress, and these decrements became more important with the prolongation of the exposure (Mackworth, 1950; Mortagy & Ramsey, 1973). Nevertheless these observations have often been realised without control group, so it was impossible to distinguish between the effect of heat stress, and the effect of time on task.
L1 Cell Adhesion Molecule Is a Novel Therapeutic Target in Intrahepatic Cholangiocarcinoma

Purpose: Intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma (ICC), a highly malignant hepatobiliary cancer, has a poor prognosis and is refractory to conventional therapies. The aim of this study is to discover a novel molecular target for the treatment of ICC. Experimental Design: To discover novel cancer-associated membrane antigens expressed in ICC cells, we generated monoclonal antibodies (mAb) by immunizing mice with intact ICC cell lines and screened for those that bind to the plasma membrane of ICC cells but not to normal cells. The mAb A10-A3 was selected and its target antigen was identified as the L1 cell adhesion molecule. Expression of L1 in ICC was evaluated by immunohistochemical analysis of tumor samples from 42 ICC patients. The functional significance of L1 expression in the tumor progression of ICC was investigated by L1 suppression, L1 overexpression, and antibody treatment. Results: L1 was not expressed in normal hepatocytes and intrahepatic bile duct epithelium but highly expressed in 40.5% of ICC patients, remarkably at the invasive front of the tumors. Suppression of L1 with short hairpin RNA significantly decreased proliferation, migration, and invasion of ICC cells in vitro. Consistently, L1 overexpression in ICC cells enhanced proliferation, migration, invasion, and apoptosis resistance. In addition, L1 short hairpin RNA or anti-L1 mAb significantly reduced the tumor growth in nude mice bearing ICC xenograft. Conclusions: We identified that L1 is expressed in ICC. L1 plays an important role in the tumor progression of ICC by enhancing cell proliferation, migration, invasion, and survival. L1 may represent a novel therapeutic target for ICC. Clin Cancer Res; 16(14); 3571–80. ©2010 AACR.
Effects of GLP-1 and Incretin-Based Therapies on Gastrointestinal Motor Function

Glucagon-like peptide 1 (GLP-1) is a hormone secreted predominantly by the distal small intestine and colon and released in response to enteral nutrient exposure. GLP-1-based therapies are now used widely in the management of type 2 diabetes and have the potential to be effective antiobesity agents. Although widely known as an incretin hormone, there is a growing body of evidence that GLP-1 also acts as an enterogastrone, with profound effects on the gastrointestinal motor system. Moreover, the effects of GLP-1 on gastrointestinal motility appear to be pivotal to its effect of reducing postprandial glycaemic excursions and may, potentially, represent the dominant mechanism. This review summarizes current knowledge of the enterogastrone properties of GLP-1, focusing on its effects on gut motility at physiological and pharmacological concentrations, and the motor actions of incretin-based therapies. While of potential importance, the inhibitory action of GLP-1 on gastric acid secretion is beyond the scope of this paper.
The Role of Education in Preparing Graduates for the Labor Market in the GCC Countries

In the 21st century knowledge economy, education plays an increasingly important role in preparing new labor market entrants for the workforce and providing skill upgrading throughout the working career. The vital role of education is propelled by the rapid pace of technological change, as well as the interdependent, global economy, forces that together demand a workforce with the capacity for leadership, problem solving, and collaboration and communication in a wide range of economic sectors. Within this context, the education and workforce development systems are critical for supporting human capital development throughout the life course. This paper reviews these broader trends regarding the role of education in the labor market and then considers the implications for education in the countries of Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), namely Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. Where data are available, the paper examines patterns of educational attainment overall in these countries, evidence of the quality of the education systems and the graduates they produce, and the labor market benefits of higher educational attainment. It also assesses gender differences, where possible, in each of these indicators of interest. The paper concludes by enumerating several key challenges facing the Gulf countries in promoting strong education systems and well functioning labor markets to meet the labor force needs in the private and public sectors in the 21st century global economy.
Revisiting N fertilisation rates in low-rainfall grain cropping regions of Australia: A risk analysis

Mallee farmers minimize downside risk in dry seasons by applying low rates of nitrogen (N) fertiliser to their cereal crops. The opportunity to respond to and capitalize on the better years is further limited as most inputs are applied upfront at sowing. We used an economic-risk decision model to identify a range of tactical N fertilisation options that increase net returns, while minimising risk for farmers with different risk attitudes. Importantly, we concluded that when accounting for long-term risks affecting farmers, the use of higher N rates can play a risk-reducing role in a highly variable environment like the Mallee.
Is Belief in Free Will a Cultural Universal

Recent experimental research has revealed surprising patterns in people's intuitions about free will and moral responsibility. One limitation of this research, however, is that it has been conducted exclusively on people from Western cultures. The present paper extends previous research by presenting a cross-cultural study examining intuitions about free will and moral responsibility in subjects from the United States, Hong Kong, India and Colombia. The results revealed a striking degree of cross- cultural convergence. In all four cultural groups, the majority of participants said that (a) our universe is indeterministic and (b) moral responsibility is not compatible with determinism. The question of free will is one of the oldest and most intractable in the history of Western philosophy; philosophers are still arguing about how best to answer it. But recent experimental research on the topic has arrived at a surprising result. Although philosophers remain divided about how to address the question of free will, it seems that a substantial majority of ordinary people have somehow converged on a single basic view. What's more, they seem to embrace a thesis—usually called incompatibilism—that most philosophers are prone to reject. Even while this research is suggestive, it suffers from an important limitation—all of the studies have been conducted on subjects in the United States. This opens up the possibility that the existing results merely reflect some idiosyncratic property of contemporary Western culture. To address this worry, we conducted a cross- cultural study of intuitions about free will. Our aim was to determine whether previous results merely pointed to some aspect of one particular culture or whether these results really were pointing to some more fundamental truth about the way people think about human freedom.
RETRACTION NOTICE: Technology licensing strategies: the interaction of process and content characteristics

The article ‘Technology licensing strategies: the interaction of process and content characteristics’ by Ulrich Lichtenthaler and Holger Ernst, published in STRATEGIC ORGANIZATION Vol 7(2): 183–221, DOI: 10.1177/1476127009102672, has been retracted at the author’s and editors’ request due to errors in reporting, for which the first author has claimed responsibility.
The STRING database in 2017: quality-controlled protein–protein association networks, made broadly accessible

A system-wide understanding of cellular function requires knowledge of all functional interactions between the expressed proteins. The STRING database aims to collect and integrate this information, by consolidating known and predicted protein–protein association data for a large number of organisms. The associations in STRING include direct (physical) interactions, as well as indirect (functional) interactions, as long as both are specific and biologically meaningful. Apart from collecting and reassessing available experimental data on protein–protein interactions, and importing known pathways and protein complexes from curated databases, interaction predictions are derived from the following sources: (i) systematic co-expression analysis, (ii) detection of shared selective signals across genomes, (iii) automated text-mining of the scientific literature and (iv) computational transfer of interaction knowledge between organisms based on gene orthology. In the latest version 10.5 of STRING, the biggest changes are concerned with data dissemination: the web frontend has been completely redesigned to reduce dependency on outdated browser technologies, and the database can now also be queried from inside the popular Cytoscape software framework. Further improvements include automated background analysis of user inputs for functional enrichments, and streamlined download options. The STRING resource is available online, at http://string-db.org/.
An Option for Lemons? The Fair Value Option for Liabilities During the Financial Crisis

We test for the presence of adverse selection among firms adopting the fair value option for liabilities (FVOL) embedded in Statement of Financial Accounting Standards (SFAS) 159 during the financial crisis. The FVOL is a controversial accounting choice because it allows firms to increase earnings when credit quality deteriorates. We find that firms with higher credit risk, lower profitability, and negative abnormal stock returns are more likely to adopt the FVOL, and that these firms exhibit negative abnormal stock returns over 1- to 3-year horizons after adoption. We conclude that adverse selection occurs among adopters. Although these findings suggest that the FVOL reduces comparability and information transparency, they also imply that accounting choice can be a valuable tool for standard setting because it can induce firms to reveal their type.
Surgery or Consultation: A Population-Based Cohort Study of Use of Orthopaedic Surgeon Services

Background This population-based cohort study has the objective to understand the sociodemographic characteristics and health conditions of patients who do not receive surgery within 18 months following an ambulatory visit to an orthopaedic surgeon. Methods Administrative healthcare databases in Ontario, Canada were linked to identify all patients making an initial ambulatory visit to orthopaedic surgeons between October 1st, 2004 and September 30th, 2005. Logistic regression was used to examine predictors of not receiving surgery within 18 months. Results Of the 477,945 patients in the cohort 49% visited orthopaedic surgeons for injury, and 24% for arthritis. Overall, 79.3% did not receive surgery within 18 months of the initial visit, which varied somewhat by diagnosis at first visit (84.5% for injury and 73.0% for arthritis) with highest proportions in the 0–24 and 25–44 age groups. The distribution by income quintile of patients visiting was skewed towards higher incomes. Regression analysis for each diagnostic group showed that younger patients were significantly more likely to be non-surgical than those aged 65+ years (age 0–24: OR 3.45 95%CI 3.33–3.57; age 25–44: OR 1.30 95%CI 1.27–1.33). The odds of not getting surgery were significantly higher for women than men for injury and other conditions; the opposite was true for arthritis and bone conditions. Conclusion A substantial proportion of referrals were for expert diagnosis or advice on management and treatment. The findings also suggest socioeconomic inequalities in access to orthopaedic care. Further research is needed to investigate whether the high caseload of non-surgical cases affects waiting times to see a surgeon. This paper contributes to the development of evidence-based strategies to streamline access to surgery, and to develop models of care for non-surgical patients to optimize the use of scarce orthopaedic surgeon resources and to enhance the management of musculoskeletal disorders across the care continuum.
Distortion results and invariant Cantor sets of unimodal maps

Abstract A distortion theory is developed for S-unimodal maps. It will be used to get some geometric understanding of invariant Cantor sets. In particular attracting Cantor sets turn out to have Lebesgue measure zero. Furthermore the ergodic behavior of S-unimodal maps is classified according to a distortion property, called the Markov-property.
Positivity constraints and information-theoretical kinetic energy functionals

Recently several variants of a new orbital-free density functional for the total N e -electron kinetic energy (KE) have been proposed. These are based on a systematically constructed ( N e − 1)-electron conditional probability function and Monte Carlo evaluation of the associated conditional expectation of the KE operator in the case of the homogeneous electron gas. Because the resulting functionals depend on n ln n ( n = the electron number density), they have been interpreted as being the leading term in a Shannon information power expression for the non-von Weizs¨acker part of the total KE. We show that these functionals violate known positivity constraints, are inconsistent with known results for the correlation energy of the homogeneous electron gas, and that the Shannon information power interpretation also violates known constraints. We consider both the full KE and Kohn-Sham KE cases. Possible corrections and extensions are considered, including a possible new form for parametrization.
Gaussian Random Number Generation

Some excellent surveys of the Gaussian random number generators (GRNGs) from the algorithmic perspective exist in the published literature to date (e.g., Thomas et al. [2007]). In the last decade, however, advancements in digital hardware have resulted in an ever-decreasing hardware cost and increased design flexibility. Additionally, recent advances in applications like gaming, weather forecasting, and simulations in physics and astronomy require faster, cheaper, and statistically accurate GRNGs. These two trends have contributed toward the development of a number of novel GRNG architectures optimized for hardware design. A detailed comparative study of these hardware architectures has been somewhat missing in the published literature. This work provides the potential user a capsulization of the published hardware GRNG architectures. We have provided the method and theory, pros and cons, and a comparative summary of the speed, statistical accuracy, and hardware resource utilization of these architectures. Finally, we have complemented this work by describing two novel hardware GRNG architectures, namely, the CLT-inversion and the multihat algorithm, respectively. These new architectures provide high tail accuracy (6σ and 8σ, respectively) at a low hardware cost.
DETERMINANTS OF PUREBRED BEEF BULL PRICE DIFFERENTIALS

Bulls are an important investment for commercial beef cattle producers since, over time, bulls introduce most of the new genetic attributes into typical beef cow herds. Therefore, heritable bull traits determine bull prices. Bulls possess a large number of traits to consider in pricing. In recent years, new measures of both qualities have been introduced in the form of expected progeny differences (EPDs). This study estimates market values associated with specific bull attributes, recently introduced EPDs, and bull sale marketing efforts. Important bull price determinants include bull color, polled, conformation, muscling, disposition, age, birth weight, weaning weight, milk EPD, birth and weaning weight EPDs, sale location, order bull was sold, whether the bull had a picture in the sale catalog, and whether a percentage of semen rights were retained by the seller.
Stein's method for Brownian approximations

Motivated by a theorem of Barbour, we revisit some of the classical limit theorems in probability from the viewpoint of the Stein method. We setup the framework to bound Wasserstein distances between some distributions on infinite dimensional spaces. We show that the convergence rate for the Poisson approximation of the Brownian motion is as expected proportional to $\lambda^{-1/2}$ where $\lambda$ is the intensity of the Poisson process. We also exhibit the speed of convergence for the Donsker Theorem and for the linear interpolation of the Brownian motion. By iterating the procedure, we give Edgeworth expansions with precise error bounds.
Electric‐Field‐Controlled Surface Instabilities in Soft Elastic Films

The surfaces of soft elastic films spontaneously form patterns. Application of an electric field above a critical value (fcric) to these patterns produces adhesive zones with distinct morphologies, such as pillars, large-amplitude fingers, or complete intimate contact (see Figure). These morphology changes, governed by film parameters such as stiffness and thickness, are explained by the physics of electrostatic-field-induced contact instabilities.
Improving participation in the Erasmus programme. Final report to the European Parliament

This study explores the extent to which European students experience financial and other barriers to participation in the ERASMUS programme. The evidence indicates that the main barriers to participation vary significantly between countries, with the exception of financial issues, which are an important concern for students everywhere. ERASMUS participation is associated with students’ socio-economic background, primarily influenced by individual preferences and cost-benefit considerations rather than questions of affordability. Other barriers to ERASMUS participation include problems with study credit recognition, as well as insufficient language skills and existing personal commitments.
Invalidating Idealized BGP Security Proposals and Countermeasures

Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) is vulnerable to routing attacks because of the lack of inherent verification mechanism. Several secure BGP schemes have been proposed to prevent routing attacks by leveraging cryptographic verification of BGP routing updates. In this paper, we present a new type of attacks, called TIGER, which aims to invalidate the “proven” security of these secure BGP schemes and allow ASes to announce forged routes even under full deployment of any existing secure BGP proposal. By launching TIGER attacks, malicious ASes can easily generate and announce forged routes which can be successfully verified by the existing secure BGP schemes. Furthermore, TIGER attacks can evade existing routing anomaly detection schemes by guaranteeing routing data-plane availability and consistency of control- and data-plane. Toward a new securing BGP scheme, we propose Anti-TIGER to detect and defend against TIGER attacks. Anti-TIGER enables robust TIGER detection by collaborations between ASes. In particular, we leverage Spread Spectrum Communication technique to watermark certain special probing packets, which manifest the existence of TIGER attacks. Anti-TIGER does not require any modifications in routing data-plane, therefore it is easy to deploy and incrementally deployable. We evaluate the effectiveness of TIGER and Anti-TIGER by experiments with real AS topologies of the Internet. Our experiment results show that TIGER attacks can successfully hijack a considerable number of prefixes. In the meanwhile, Anti-TIGER can achieve 100 percent detection ratio of TIGER attacks.