Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Commentary: Creativity and Memory: Effects of an Episodic-Specificity Induction on Divergent Thinking

Madore et al. (2015) reported evidence in support of the idea that episodic-specificity induction facilitates creative thinking. In this Commentary, I draw attention to the issue of clarity in the targeting of creativity-relevant operations. The basis of these concerns is grounded in the atypical nature of the adopted methodological protocols as well as the terminology used to refer to the measures of interest. Such inconsistencies could lead to confusion or the perpetuation of misguided notions. The objective of this commentary is to therefore lay bare these concerns so that future investigations based on this study will be mindful of the same.
Constructing tissue microarrays from core needle biopsies of breast cancers

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Ca2+, cAMP, and transduction of non-self perception during plant immune responses

Ca2+ influx is an early signal initiating cytosolic immune responses to pathogen perception in plant cells; molecular components linking pathogen recognition to Ca2+ influx are not delineated. Work presented here provides insights into this biological system of non-self recognition and response activation. We have recently identified a cyclic nucleotide-activated ion channel as facilitating the Ca2+ flux that initiates immune signaling in the plant cell cytosol. Work in this report shows that elevation of cAMP is a key player in this signaling cascade. We show that cytosolic Ca2+ elevation, nitric oxide (NO) and reactive oxygen species generation, as well as immune signaling, lead to a hypersensitive response upon application of pathogens and/or conserved molecules that are components of microbes and are all dependent on cAMP generation. Exogenous cAMP leads to Ca2+ channel-dependent cytosolic Ca2+ elevation, NO generation, and defense response gene expression in the absence of the non-self pathogen signal. Inoculation of leaves with a bacterial pathogen leads to cAMP elevation coordinated with Ca2+ rise. cAMP acts as a secondary messenger in plants; however, no specific protein has been heretofore identified as activated by cAMP in a manner associated with a signaling cascade in plants, as we report here. Our linkage of cAMP elevation in pathogen-inoculated plant leaves to Ca2+ channels and immune signaling downstream from cytosolic Ca2+ elevation provides a model for how non-self detection can be transduced to initiate the cascade of events in the cell cytosol that orchestrate pathogen defense responses.
A Simple Model of Optimal Population Coding for Sensory Systems

A fundamental task of a sensory system is to infer information about the environment. It has long been suggested that an important goal of the first stage of this process is to encode the raw sensory signal efficiently by reducing its redundancy in the neural representation. Some redundancy, however, would be expected because it can provide robustness to noise inherent in the system. Encoding the raw sensory signal itself is also problematic, because it contains distortion and noise. The optimal solution would be constrained further by limited biological resources. Here, we analyze a simple theoretical model that incorporates these key aspects of sensory coding, and apply it to conditions in the retina. The model specifies the optimal way to incorporate redundancy in a population of noisy neurons, while also optimally compensating for sensory distortion and noise. Importantly, it allows an arbitrary input-to-output cell ratio between sensory units (photoreceptors) and encoding units (retinal ganglion cells), providing predictions of retinal codes at different eccentricities. Compared to earlier models based on redundancy reduction, the proposed model conveys more information about the original signal. Interestingly, redundancy reduction can be near-optimal when the number of encoding units is limited, such as in the peripheral retina. We show that there exist multiple, equally-optimal solutions whose receptive field structure and organization vary significantly. Among these, the one which maximizes the spatial locality of the computation, but not the sparsity of either synaptic weights or neural responses, is consistent with known basic properties of retinal receptive fields. The model further predicts that receptive field structure changes less with light adaptation at higher input-to-output cell ratios, such as in the periphery.
An essential role of the basal body protein SAS-6 in Plasmodium male gamete development and malaria transmission

Gametocytes are the sole Plasmodium parasite stages that infect mosquitoes; therefore development of functional gametes is required for malaria transmission. Flagellum assembly of the Plasmodium male gamete differs from that of most other eukaryotes in that it is intracytoplasmic but retains a key conserved feature: axonemes assemble from basal bodies. The centriole/basal body protein SAS‐6 normally regulates assembly and duplication of these organelles and its depletion causes severe flagellar/ciliary abnormalities in a diverse array of eukaryotes. Since basal body and flagellum assembly are intimately coupled to male gamete development in Plasmodium, we hypothesized that SAS‐6 disruption may cause gametogenesis defects and perturb transmission. We show that Plasmodium berghei sas6 knockouts display severely abnormal male gametogenesis presenting reduced basal body numbers, axonemal assembly defects and abnormal nuclear allocation. The defects in gametogenesis reduce fertilization and render Pbsas6 knockouts less infectious to mosquitoes. Additionally, we show that lack of Pbsas6 blocks transmission from mosquito to vertebrate host, revealing an additional yet undefined role in ookinete to sporulating oocysts transition. These findings underscore the vulnerability of the basal body/SAS‐6 to malaria transmission blocking interventions.
Individual development plans from a critical didactic perspective: Focusing on Montessori- and Reggio Emilia-profiled preschools in Sweden

Individual development plans, which are sometimes designed as ‘agreements — contracts’, can be considered the most rigid type of regulation on the individual level in the history of preschool in Sweden. Today we speak about a deregulated school. This regulation seems to have changed its character, gradually drifting from school regulation to individual and self-regulation. The study aims to map and discuss the variation of content and positions for children in the documentation from all preschools in a municipality in the south of Sweden. Documentation and individual development plans (IDP) are studied from preschools with different pedagogical profiles. Materials from Montessori- and Reggio Emilia-inspired preschools are focused on. A critical didactic perspective refers to a discussion and critical scrutiny of the structure of contents, assessment and position of children in different types of documentation. The perspective leads to questions such as: how is content constructed, and what governs the choice of content in IDPs and documentation at the institutional and individual levels? How is content related to pedagogical profile? What identities and positions are formulated for children in relation to various contents and profiles? The empirical data in the study were gathered in 2008 and comprises text in the form of governing documents on different levels: as municipal guidelines, profile descriptions on the municipality’s websites and IDP forms. Tentative results show a variation with both similar and diverse constructions of contents and positions related to pedagogical profiles.
The Level of Social Studies Teachers’ Environmental Awareness in Jordan and its Relation with some Variables

This study aimed at exploring the level of the social studies teachers’ environmental awareness in Jordan. The sample of the study consisted of 42 males and females at Al- Rosifa District basic stage in Jordan. For the purposes of the study, a valid and reliable environmental awareness scale was developed. The scale consisted of three domains, namely; environmental knowledge, environmental attitudes, and environmental skills. The results indicated that the level of the environmental awareness scale throughout its dimensions in favor of social studies teachers were 80% below the accepted educational level. There were statistically significant differences between the environmental awareness scale throughout its dimensions to the specialization variable in favor of the Geography. The results also showed that there were no statistically significant differences that were related to the gender and experience variables.
Figurative language and multicultural education: metaphors of language acquisition and retention

Linguistics has long recognised that figurative language in the form of metaphorical expressions structures and communicates attitudes towards the ideas and concepts being expressed and that multilingual students also employ linguistic figures frequently in their writing. In this study, multilingual students use figurative language to both critique and describe experiences related to language acquisition and retention. Faced with the task of using three or more languages, the L3 English language students studied often turn to metaphor to describe the relationships between their languages and the different contexts in which they use the linguistic resources available to them. The following article examines the English writing produced by nine immigrant students in an all immigrant Norwegian upper secondary school class. The students employ spatial figures to describe the complex linguistic landscape they inhabit, drawing upon the domains of architecture and embodiment to represent their experiences in multilingual Scandinavia.
Improving the Efficiency of SfM and its Applications

Large scale reconstructions of camera matrices and point clouds have been created using structure from motion from community photo collections. Such a dataset is rich in information; we can interpret it as a sampling of the geometry and appearance of the underlying space. In this dissertation, we encode the visibility information between and among points and cameras as visibility probabilities. The conditional visibility probability of a set of points on a point (or a set of cameras on a camera) can be used to select points (or cameras) based on their dependence or independence. We use it to efficiently solve the problems of image localization and feature triangulation. We show how the conditional probability can be combined with other measures to prioritize a set of points (or cameras) for matching and use it for fast guided search of points for the image localization problem. We define the problem of feature triangulation as the estimation of 3D coordinate of a given 2D feature using the SfM data. Our approach can guide the search to quickly identify a subset of cameras in which the feature is visible. Other than image localization and feature triangulation, bundle adjustment is a key component of the reconstruction pipeline and often its slowest and the most computational resource intensive. It hasn’t been parallelized effectively so far. We also a present a hybrid implementation of sparse bundle adjustment on the GPU using CUDA, with the CPU working in parallel. The algorithm is decomposed into smaller steps, each of which is scheduled on the GPU or the CPU. We develop efficient kernels for the steps and make use of existing libraries for several steps. Our implementation outperforms the CPU implementation significantly, achieving a speedup of 30-40 times over the standard CPU implementation for datasets with upto 500 images on an Nvidia Tesla C2050 GPU.
The bZip Transcription Factor Cap1p Is Involved in Multidrug Resistance and Oxidative Stress Response inCandida albicans

ABSTRACT Candida albicans is an opportunistic pathogenic yeast which frequently develops resistance to the antifungal agent fluconazole (FCZ) in patients undergoing long-term therapy. FCZ-resistant strains often display a reduced intracellular FCZ accumulation which correlates with the overexpression of the ATP-binding cassette transporters CDR1 and CDR2or the major facilitator (MF) MDR1. We have recently cloned a C. albicans gene, named CAP1, which codes for a bZip transcription factor of the AP-1 family homologous to the Yap1 protein involved in multidrug resistance and response to oxidative stress in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. CAP1 was found to confer FCZ resistance in S. cerevisiae by transcriptionally activating FLR1, a gene coding for an MF homologous to theC. albicans MDR1 gene product (A.-M. Alarco, I. Balan, D. Talibi, N. Mainville, and M. Raymond, J. Biol. Chem. 272:19304–19313, 1997). To study the role of CAP1 inC. albicans, we constructed a CAI4-derived mutant strain carrying a homozygous deletion of the CAP1 gene (CJD21). We found that deletion of CAP1 did not affect the susceptibility of CJD21 cells to FCZ, cerulenin, brefeldin A, and diamide but caused hypersensitivity to cadmium, 4-nitroquinolineN-oxide, 1,10-phenanthroline, and hydrogen peroxide, an effect which was reverted by reintroduction of the CAP1gene in these cells. Introduction of a hyperactive truncated allele ofCAP1 (CAP1-TR) in CJD21 resulted in resistance of the cells to all of the above compounds except hydrogen peroxide. The hyperresistant phenotype displayed by the CJD21 CAP1-TRtransformants was found to correlate with the overexpression of a number of potential CAP1 transcriptional targets such asMDR1, CaYCF1, CaGLR1, andCaTRR1. Taken together, our results demonstrate thatCAP1 is involved in multidrug resistance and oxidative stress response in C. albicans. Finally, disruption ofCAP1 in strain FR2, selected in vitro for FCZ resistance and constitutively overexpressing MDR1, did not suppress but rather increased the levels of MDR1 expression, demonstrating that CAP1 acts as a negative transcriptional regulator of the MDR1 gene in FR2 and is not responsible for MDR1 overexpression in this strain.
Interleukin-15 Plays a Central Role in Human Kidney Physiology and Cancer through the γc Signaling Pathway

The ability of Interleukin-15 (IL-15) to activate many immune antitumor mechanisms renders the cytokine a good candidate for the therapy of solid tumors, particularly renal cell carcinoma. Although IL-15 is being currently used in clinical trials, the function of the cytokine on kidney's components has not been extensively studied; we thus investigated the role of IL-15 on normal and tumor renal epithelial cells. Herein, we analyzed the expression and the biological functions of IL-15 in normal renal proximal tubuli (RPTEC) and in their neoplastic counterparts, the renal clear cell carcinomas (RCC). This study shows that RPTEC express a functional heterotrimeric IL-15Rαβγc complex whose stimulation with physiologic concentrations of rhIL-15 is sufficient to inhibit epithelial mesenchymal transition (EMT) commitment preserving E-cadherin expression. Indeed, IL-15 is not only a survival factor for epithelial cells, but it can also preserve the renal epithelial phenotype through the γc-signaling pathway, demonstrating that the cytokine possess a wide range of action in epithelial homeostasis. In contrast, in RCC in vitro and in vivo studies reveal a defect in the expression of γc-receptor and JAK3 associated kinase, which strongly impacts IL-15 signaling. Indeed, in the absence of the γc/JAK3 couple we demonstrate the assembly of an unprecedented functional high affinity IL-15Rαβ heterodimer, that in response to physiologic concentrations of IL-15, triggers an unbalanced signal causing the down-regulation of the tumor suppressor gene E-cadherin, favoring RCC EMT process. Remarkably, the rescue of IL-15/γc-dependent signaling (STAT5), by co-transfecting γc and JAK3 in RCC, inhibits EMT reversion. In conclusion, these data highlight the central role of IL-15 and γc-receptor signaling in renal homeostasis through the control of E-cadherin expression and preservation of epithelial phenotype both in RPTEC (up-regulation) and RCC (down-regulation).
Comparing Different Approaches to the use of DiffServ in the Internet

The existing Internet appears to provide good quality service for a very wide range of services, possibly because the TCP protocols aim to achieve fair queueing, or processor sharing. The DiffServ architecture aims to do better than this by providing different performance standards for different classes of service. The natural way to apply DiffServ is to allocate classes in accordance with the urgency or priority of the requests. However, another approach is to use DiffServ to allocate service classes according to the "size" of the requests, where the concept of "size" can be defined in a variety of ways: total bytes in a flow, rate of a flow, or by a series of token buckets. We use simple queueing models to investigate how much improvement in performance could be obtained by implementing this service discipline, and whether, as a consequence, it is unnecessary and perhaps even dangerous to assign classes of service in accordance with the type of service requested. The results suggest that shortest job first offers considerable advantages over processor sharing. Thus in spite of the difficulties of identifying the size of flows it may be worthwhile to consider how something like shortest job first can be implemented. On the other hand it appears that other priority queue strategies, not based on job size, are risky, in that the marginal advantages gained by favoured jobs are very small, and the majority of jobs can expect to suffer worse response times.
Coordinating for Flexibility in e-Business Supply Chains

The widespread use of information technology (IT) to create electronic linkages among supply chain partners with the objective of reducing transaction costs may have unintended adverse effects on supply chain flexibility. Increasing business dynamics, changing customer preferences, and disruptive technological shifts pose the need for two kinds of flexibility that interenterprise information systems must address--the ability of interenterprise linkages to support changes in offering characteristics (offering flexibility) and the ability to alter linkages to partner with different supply chain players (partnering flexibility). This study explores how enterprises in supply chains may forge supply chain linkages that enable both types of flexibility jointly, and allow them to deal with ubiquitous change. Drawing on March and Simon's coordination theory, we propose two design principles: (1) advance structuring of interorganizational processes and information exchange that allows partnering organizations to be loosely coupled, and (2) IT-supported dynamic adjustment that allows enterprises to quickly sense change and adapt their supply chain linkages. This study reports on a survey of 41 supply chain relationships in the IT industry. For design principle, our empirical investigation of factors shows (1) that modular design of interconnected processes and structured data connectivity are associated with higher supply chain flexibility, and (2) that deep coordination-related knowledge is critical for supply chain flexibility. Also, sharing a broad range of information with partners is detrimental to supply chain flexibility, and organizations should instead focus on improving the quality of information shared. For industry managers, the study provides clear insights for information infrastructure design. To manage their interdependencies, enterprises need to encapsulate their interconnected processes in modular chunks, and support these with IT platforms for information exchange in structured formats. Enterprises also need to nurture their execution capabilities by putting in place the information systems to process information exchanged with partners, augmenting their understanding of factors such as how partner actions need to trigger adaptive responses. For researchers, the study initiates a new stream of theorizing that focuses on the role of the information infrastructure in managing the tension between competing goals of offering flexibility and partnering flexibility.
The impact of the Russian transition on psychosocial resources and psychological distress

Studies suggest that the difficult transition of the Russian economy has led to decreased physical health among Russians. However, the impact of economic turmoil on Russians' psychological health has not been examined. We used Hobfoll's (1988; 1998) Conservation of Resources (COR) theory to examine how economic losses deteriorate personal and social resources (e.g., mastery and social support), and how these deteriorated resources, in turn, impact psychological well being. Participants were Russian women working in the retail (n = 99) and medical (n = 99) fields, two poorly paid sectors. Structural equation modeling indicated that economic loss negatively impacted mastery, but not social support. Women with greater mastery and social support resources, in turn, reported less psychological distress. Economic loss had both direct and indirect effects, through mastery, on women's psychological distress. Results supported COR theory and point to the importance of building and sustaining personal and social resources in the face of major economic stress. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Utilization of Self-Schemas as a Mechanism of Interpretational Bias in Aggressive Children

The goal of this research was to examine social information-processing mechanisms that may be responsible for hostile interpretational biases among aggressive children. In Study 1, 32 aggressive and 42 nonaggressive adolescent boys and girls were presented with hypothetical stories in which they were to imagine being the object of an ambiguous provocation by a peer. Their task was to interpret the peer's intention. Equal numbers of cues supporting a hostile interpretation and a benign interpretation accompanied the stories. Aggressive subjects demonstrated a relative bias toward attributing hostile intent to the peer provocateur. It also was found that aggressive subjects were less likely than others to utilize presented cues and more likely than others to utilize self-schemas when asked to explain their decisions. This pattern of cue utilization was not responsible for the interpretational patterns, however. In Study 2, similar stories were presented, but the numbers of hostile and benign cues were weigh.