Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Conditioned Media from Adipose-Tissue-Derived Mesenchymal Stem Cells Downregulate Degradative Mediators Induced by Interleukin-1β in Osteoarthritic Chondrocytes

Osteoarthritis (OA) is the most frequent joint disorder and an important cause of disability. Recent studies have shown the potential of adipose-tissue-derived mesenchymal stem cells (AD-MSC) for cartilage repair. We have investigated whether conditioned medium from AD-MSC (CM) may regulate in OA chondrocytes a number of key mediators involved in cartilage degeneration. CM enhanced type II collagen expression in OA chondrocytes while decreasing matrix metalloproteinase (MMP) activity in cell supernatants as well as the levels of MMP-3 and MMP-13 proteins and mRNA in OA chondrocytes stimulated with interleukin- (IL-) 1β. In addition, CM increased IL-10 levels and counteracted the stimulating effects of IL-1β on the production of tumor necrosis factor-α, IL-6, prostaglandin E2, and NO measured as nitrite and the mRNA expression of these cytokines, CCL-2, CCL-3, CCL-4, CCL-5, CCL-8, CCL-19, CCL-20, CXCL-1, CXCL-2, CXCL-3, CXCL-5, CXCL-8, cyclooxygenase-2, microsomal prostaglandin E synthase-1, and inducible NO synthase. These effects may be dependent on the inhibition of nuclear factor-κB activation by CM. Our data demonstrate the chondroprotective actions of CM and provide support for further studies of this approach in joint disease.
Investigation of Dendriplexes by Ion Mobility-Mass Spectrometry

Highly branched polyamidoamine (PAMAM) dendrimers presenting biological activities have been envisaged as non-viral gene delivery vectors. They are known to associate with nucleic acid (DNA) in non-covalent complexes via electrostatic interactions. Although their transfection efficiency has been proved, PAMAMs present a significant cytotoxicity due to their cationic surface. To overcome such a drawback, different chemical modifications of the PAMAM surface have been reported such as the attachment of hydrophobic residues. In the present work, we studied the complexation of DNA duplexes with different low-generation PAMAM; ammonia-cored G0(N) and G1(N) PAMAM, native or chemically modified with aromatic residues, i.e., phenyl-modified-PAMAM G0(N) and phenylalanine-modified-PAMAM G1(N). To investigate the interactions involved in the PAMAM/DNA complexes, also called dendriplexes, we used electrospray ionization (ESI) coupled to ion mobility spectrometry-mass-spectrometry (IM-MS). ESI is known to allow the study of non-covalent complexes in native conditions while IM-MS is a bidimensional separation technique particularly useful for the characterization of complex mixtures. IM-MS allows the separation of the expected complexes, possible additional non-specific complexes and the free ligands. Tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS) was also used for the structural characterization. This work highlights the contribution of IM-MS and MS/MS for the study of small dendriplexes. The stoichiometries of the complexes and the equilibrium dissociation constants were determined. The [DNA/native PAMAM] and [DNA/modified-PAMAM] dendriplexes were compared.
Reasoning about Relaxed Programs

Approximate program transformations such as task skipping [27, 28], loop perforation [20, 21, 32], multiple selectable implementations [3, 4, 15], approximate function memoization [10], and approximate data types [31] produce programs that can execute at a variety of points in an underlying performance versus accuracy tradeoff space. Namely, these transformed programs trade accuracy of their results for increased performance by dynamically and nondeterministically modifying variables that control their execution. We call such transformed programs relaxed programs — they have been extended with additional nondeterminism to relax their semantics and enable greater flexibility in their execution. We present programming language constructs for developing and specifying relaxed programs. We also present proof rules for reasoning about properties of relaxed programs. Our proof rules enable programmers to directly specify and verify acceptability properties that characterize the desired correctness relationships between the values of variables in a program’s original semantics (before the transformation) and its relaxed semantics. Our proof rules also support the verification of safety properties (which characterize desirable properties involving values in only the current execution). The rules are designed to support a reasoning approach in which the majority of the reasoning effort uses the original semantics. This effort is then reused to establish the desired properties of the program under the relaxed semantics. We have formalized the dynamic semantics of our target programming language and the proof rules in Coq, and verified that the proof rules are sound with respect to the dynamic semantics. Our Coq implementation enables developers to obtain fully machine checked verifications of their relaxed programs.
Movement and the mechanical properties of the intact human elbow joint.

Recent studies of motor coordination have emphasized the importance of the mechanical properties of muscle in both load compensation-and in the control of movement. Teleologically, different mechanical characteristics may be optimal for different tasks. For example, a skiier may wish to adjust the stiffness of his legs in accordance with the terrain and snow conditions. How, and to what extent can subjects control the mechanical properties of their joints? To help answer this question, we investigated short term changes in muscle properties by measuring the response of the intact human elbow joint to mechanical perturbations. The resistance of the intact joint to such displacements reflects contributions from the muscles and passive tissues spanning the elbow joint. In order to explore the effects of both muscular activation and movement on joint properties we studied three conditions: (1) voluntary isometric contraction, (2) passive movement, and (3) voluntary movement. In the isometric condition, the subject maintained a constant arm position against various loads. In the passive movement condition the subject's arm was moved at a constant velocity. Finally, the voluntary movement condition combined muscular activation with movement. During all three conditions a small amplitude, high frequency (15-30 Hz) sinusoidal perturbation was applied about the elbow joint. Joint impedance was derived from the resistance of the elbow to this superimposed displacement. We obtained continuous measures of joint impedance, joint angle, and the biceps and triceps EMG's. During isometric contraction, joint impedance increased monotonically with increasing muscular activation (estimated by EMG). In contrast, during passive arm movements joint impedance decreased markedly. This was true even for very slow passive movements when no change in muscular activation could be detected. Finally, voluntary movements resulted in changes in joint impedance which were consistent with the combined effects of muscular activation and movement. We attribute these changes in joint impedance to variations in the properties of the muscles acting about the joint. We conclude that length
Convergence of male and female lung cancer mortality at younger ages in the European Union and Russia.

BACKGROUND Lung cancer epidemics emerged first among males in European countries in the first half of the 20th century and then among females in the second half. We have explored the recent convergence in sex ratios. METHODS Age-standardized (world standard) lung cancer mortality rates at ages 20 to 44 years were derived from WHO for 26 countries separately from the beginning of their data series to 2002. The most recent periods in which trends could be adequately represented as linear were determined using the software package 'Joinpoint'. Countries were classified by their statistically significant trends for each sex in these periods. RESULTS Lung cancer mortality among young adult males tended to decrease. Among females there were significant recent increases in eight ('Pattern 1') countries and no significant trend in 16 ('Pattern 2') countries. Rates decreased in both sexes in the UK and rose in both sexes in Portugal. The extent to which sex ratios had actually converged by 2002 varied widely, with values still above 3 in six eastern countries and below 1 in Scandinavia, the Netherlands and Ireland. CONCLUSION At the beginning of 21st century, there is a general tendency for sex ratios for lung cancer mortality to converge towards 1, but with considerable variation in the extent to which such convergence has been realized.
The answer is blowing in the wind: simulating the interaction of jets with dynamic cluster atmospheres

We present numerical simulations investigating the interaction of active galactic nucleus jets with galaxy clusters, for the first time taking into account the dynamic nature of the cluster gas and detailed cluster physics. The simulations successfully reproduce the observed morphologies of radio sources in clusters. We find that cluster inhomogeneities and large-scale flows have a significant impact on the morphology of the radio source and cannot be ignored a priori when investigating radio source dynamics. Morphological comparison suggests that the gas in the centres of clusters like Virgo and Abell 4059 shows significant shear and/or rotation. We find that shear and rotation in the intracluster medium move large amounts of cold material back into the path of the jet, ensuring that subsequent jet outbursts encounter a sufficient column density of gas to couple with the inner cluster gas, thus alleviating the problem of evacuated channels discussed in the recent literature. The same effects redistribute the excess energy ΔE deposited by the jet, making the distribution of ΔE at late times consistent with being isotropic.
Evaluating young and old faces on social dimensions: Trustworthiness and dominance

In the present study we provide measures of dominance and trustworthiness of a subset of faces from the Productive Aging Laboratory (PAL) Face Database (Minear & Park, 2004). Recent research has shown that dominance and trustworthiness are central to social perception, and that they can be inferred from faces in milliseconds (Oosterhof & Todorov, 2008). A total of 286 faces from four age groups (18-29; 30-49; 50-69; 70-94) were presented and evaluated in dominance and trustworthiness. The same faces were also evaluated on other four dimensions: likeability, perceived age, attractiveness, and gender typicality. This information enriches the PAL Face Database, making it more valuable for researchers investigating faceprocessing mechanisms across the lifespan. The collected norms are available for download as supplemental materials.
Earworms from Three Angles : Situational Antecedents , Personality Predisposition and the Quest for a Musical Formula

Involuntary, spontaneous cognitions are common, everyday experiences that occur against a backdrop of deliberate goal-directed mentation (Christoff, Ream & Gabrieli, 2004). One such phenomenon may hold special promise for empirical investigation of this often elusive experience. Involuntary musical imagery (INMI) or ‘earworms’ are vivid, identifiable, and affect 91.7% of the population at least once a week (Liikkanen, 2012). Utilizing an online survey instrument (http://earwormery.com/) we collected several thousand reports of earworm episodes, in collaboration with the BBC. Study 1 employed a qualitative grounded theory analysis to explore themes relating to the situational antecedents of INMI experiences (Williamson et al., 2011). The analysis revealed four main trigger themes for INMI experiences and categorized the role of different music media. Study 2 used structural equation modeling (SEM) to relate individual differences in INMI characteristics and isolated an influence of obsessive compulsive traits. Study 3 comprised a computational analysis of the musical structure of several hundred earworm tunes and compared them to matched control tunes. A statistical classification model was employed to predict whether a tune could be classified as an earworm based on its
An Empirical Analysis of the Effectiveness of Browser-based Antiphishing Solutions

Phishing has by far become the most dangerous form of fraud to hit online business. Due to the key role in accessing the Internet, web browsers are at a strategic position to offer the protection against the risks of phishing attacks. Varieties of security companies have proposed their browser-based antiphishing solutions to protect the end-use. In this paper, we used 3403 fresh phishing URLs and 1000 legitimate URLs to conduct four experiments on ten popular anti-phishing tools including browsers and browser plug-ins. Overall, we found that the Google Chrome and Firefox identified the most phishing sites, but these two browsers still missed more than 20% fraudulent sites. Qihoo 360 Secure Explorer did a strong performance under the APAC dataset that demonstrate their excellent abilities of the Chinese-target phishing detection. We also found that different anti-phishing tools have totally different reactions between regions and languages. And finally, we proposed our suggestions for designing a comprehensive anti-phishing mechanism.
Multisensory and sensorimotor origins of the sense of self

Cognitive neuroscience has increasingly focused on studying the subject, i.e. the self, of conscious experience. In order to be the subject of an experience, we generally experience owning a physical body, being located within that body, and being able to distinguish the body and its actions from others. These pre-reflective experiences are based on brain mechanisms of multisensory and sensorimotor integration. In this thesis I investigated how our sense of self, in particular the senses of body ownership and of agency, depend on multimodal bodily signals. I achieved this by using approaches developed by cognitive neuroscience to study how the sense of self relates to the processing of bodily signals: creating bodily illusions with multisensory conflicts through the use of virtual reality and robotics. The first part of this thesis describes the investigation of the sense of body ownership in healthy subjects and in spinal cord injury patients, achieved by inducing conflicts between tactile information and visual feedback. The research presented in the second part of the thesis is centered on the experience of self-touch. There, I have first investigated how the manipulation of reference frames influences the perception of the illusion of self-touch, and second, how active self-touch influences the sense of body ownership. Lastly, in the third part of the thesis, I investigated how experimentally induced multisensory and sensorimotor conflicts perturb the sense of self in healthy subjects and induce experiences similar to certain symptoms observed in neurological and psychiatric disorders. I show that particular conflicts between bodily signals not only affect body perception and sense of agency for motor actions but also propagate to higher levels and influence even the sense of agency for mental representations in healthy subjects. Finally, I discuss my results and their relation to existing knowledge on bodily self-consciousness and position them in a broader picture of our current understanding of the self.
Insulin Gene Transcription Is Mediated by Interactions between the p300 Coactivator and PDX-1, BETA2, and E47

ABSTRACT Pancreatic β-cell-type-specific expression of the insulin gene requires both ubiquitous and cell-enriched activators, which are organized within the enhancer region into a network of protein-protein and protein-DNA interactions to promote transcriptional synergy. Protein-protein-mediated communication between DNA-bound activators and the RNA polymerase II transcriptional machinery is inhibited by the adenovirus E1A protein as a result of E1A’s binding to the p300 coactivator. E1A disrupts signaling between the non-DNA-binding p300 protein and the basic helix-loop-helix DNA-binding factors of insulin’s E-element activator (i.e., the islet-enriched BETA2 and generally distributed E47 proteins), as well as a distinct but unidentified enhancer factor. In the present report, we show that E1A binding to p300 prevents activation by insulin’s β-cell-enriched PDX-1 activator. p300 interacts directly with the N-terminal region of the PDX-1 homeodomain protein, which contains conserved amino acid sequences essential for activation. The unique combination of PDX-1, BETA2, E47, and p300 was shown to promote synergistic activation from a transfected insulin enhancer-driven reporter construct in non-β cells, a process inhibited by E1A. In addition, E1A inhibited the level of PDX-1 and BETA2 complex formation in β cells. These results indicate that E1A inhibits insulin gene transcription by preventing communication between the p300 coactivator and key DNA-bound activators, like PDX-1 and BETA2:E47.
Change in β‐Catenin Localization Suggests Involvement of the Canonical Wnt Pathway in Boxer Dogs with Arrhythmogenic Right Ventricular Cardiomyopathy

Background Arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy (ARVC) is an inherited myocardial disease with high prevalence in the Boxer dog population. It is characterized by replacement of the myocardium with fatty or fibro‐fatty tissue. Several mechanisms for the development of ARVC have been suggested, including dysfunction of the canonical Wnt pathway, which is linked to many cellular functions, including growth and differentiation of adipocytes. Hypothesis Wnt pathway dysfunction is involved in the development of ARVC in the Boxer as evidenced by mislocalization of β‐catenin, an integral Wnt pathway modulator, and striatin, a known Wnt pathway component. Animals Five dogs without ARVC and 15 Boxers with ARVC were identified by 24‐hour Holter monitoring and histopathologic examination of the heart. Methods Right ventricular samples were collected and examined using confocal microscopy, Western blots, and quantitative (q) PCR. Results Confocal microscopy indicated that β‐catenin localized at sites of cell‐to‐cell apposition, and striatin localized in a diffuse intracellular pattern in hearts without ARVC. In hearts affected with ARVC, both β‐catenin and striatin were colocalized with the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) marker calreticulin. Western blots indentified a 50% increase in the amount of β‐catenin in ARVC samples. No change in β catenin mRNA was detected using qPCR. Conclusions Our data suggest that trafficking of Wnt pathway proteins from the ER to their proper location within the cell is inhibited in Boxers with ARVC. These results suggest that disturbances in the Wnt pathway may play a role in the development of ARVC in the Boxer.
Vehicle license plate localization using wavelets

This paper presents a new method for vehicle license plate localization. The proposed method uses wavelet decomposition for localizing the license plate. We first preprocess the image by masking the non-license plate border with the prior knowledge of the distance of the vehicle. We then use the unique property of sudden and a frequent transition which takes place across characters of the license plate to convert it to a license plate location detectable image by dividing the rows into its component zones. The component zone set which includes the license plate is determined using a transition counter and the zone which holds the maximum value is determined and validated using the wavelet based method. Simulation results are included to show the effectiveness of the proposed method for the localization of Indian license plates.
Attention, Action, and Greenwash in Family-Influenced Firms? Evidence From Polluting Industries

Drawing on complementary theoretical perspectives, we investigate whether and to what extent family-influenced firms differ from their nonfamily counterparts in terms of the relationship between managerial attention to natural environmental issues and concomitant environmental actions. Using data from letters to shareholders and the KLD database, we investigate 97 firms in five polluting industries. Our findings indicate that family firms positively moderate the relationship between top managers’ attention to natural environmental issues and proactive environmental action. Conversely, nonfamily firms demonstrate less proactive environmental action as their attention to environmental issues increases, suggesting greenwashing. We argue that attention and action behaviors in family firms are intimately connected with their desire to preserve socioemotional wealth and indicate a lower propensity to greenwash, whereas nonfamily firms’ short-term financial objectives may motivate a different response pattern.
Professors in the Boardroom and Their Impact on Corporate Governance and Firm Performance

Directors from academia served on the boards of around 40% of S&P 1,500 firms over the 1998-2011 period. This paper investigates the effects of academic directors on corporate governance and firm performance. We find that companies with directors from academia are associated with higher performance and this relation is driven by professors without administrative jobs. We also find that academic directors play an important governance role through their advising and monitoring functions. Specifically, our results show that the presence of academic directors is associated with higher acquisition performance, higher number of patents and citations, higher stock price informativeness, lower discretionary accruals, lower CEO compensation, and higher CEO forced turnover-performance sensitivity. Overall, our results provide supportive evidence that academic directors are valuable advisors and effective monitors and that, in general, firms benefit from having academic directors.
Some perspectives on the viscosity of actin filaments

Measurements of the dynamic viscosity of various actin filament preparations under conditions of low and controlled shear: (a) confirm the shear rate dependence of F-actin viscosities and show that this dependence obeys the power law relationship observed for entangled synthetic polymers; (b) permit estimation of the extent to which shear artifact amplifies changes in the apparent viscosity of F-actin measured in a falling ball viscometer; (c) show that gel-filtration chromatography of actin and the addition of cytochalasin B to F-actin bring about small (20-40%) changes in the viscosity of the F-actin solutions. These variations are consistent with alterations in the actin-binding protein concentrations required for incipient gelation, a parameter inversely related to average filament length. Therefore: (a) changes in the viscosity of F-actin can be magnified by use of the falling ball viscometer, and may exaggerate their biological importance; (b) chromatography of actin may not be required to obtain meaningful information about the rheology of actin filaments; (c) changes in actin filament length can satisfactorily explain alterations in F-actin viscosity exerted by cytochalasin B and by chromatography, obviating the need to postulate specific interfilament interactions.