Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Vesicular stomatitis virus glycoprotein, albumin, and transferrin are transported to the cell surface via the same Golgi vesicles

Human hepatoma cells, infected by vesicular stomatitis virus, offer a good system to study simultaneously the intracellular localization of a well defined transmembrane glycoprotein (VSV-G), a secretory glycoprotein (transferrin), and a nonglycosylated secretory protein (albumin). We used monospecific antibodies in combination with 5- and 8- nm colloidal gold particles complexed with protein A to immunolabel these proteins simultaneously in thin frozen sections of hepatoma cells. VSV-G, transferrin, and albumin are present in the same rough endoplasmic reticulum cisternae, the same Golgi compartments, and the same secretory vesicles. In the presence of the ionophore monensin intracellular transport is blocked at the trans cisternae of the Golgi complex, and VSV-G, transferrin, and albumin accumulate in dilated cisternae, which are apparently derived from the trans-Golgi elements. Glycoproteins, synthesized and secreted in the presence of monensin, are less acidic than those in control cultures. This is probably caused by a less efficient contact between the soluble secretory proteins and the membrane-bound glycosyltransferases that are present in the most monensin-affected (trans) Golgi cisternae.
On the hamiltonicity of line graphs of locally finite, 6‐edge‐connected graphs

The topological approach to the study of infinite graphs of Diestel and KÜhn has enabled several results on Hamilton cycles in finite graphs to be extended to locally finite graphs. We consider the result that the line graph of a finite 4‐edge‐connected graph is hamiltonian. We prove a weaker version of this result for infinite graphs: The line graph of locally finite, 6‐edge‐connected graph with a finite number of ends, each of which is thin, is hamiltonian.
Role of dynorphin and GABA in the inhibitory regulation of NMDA-induced dopamine release in striosome- and matrix-enriched areas of the rat striatum

Using a new superfusion procedure in vitro, we have previously reported that the NMDA-evoked release of newly synthesized 3H-dopamine (DA) was higher in matrix- than in striosome-enriched areas of the rat striatum. In addition, GABAergic medium-sized spiny neurons were shown to be indirectly involved in this regulation. Since dynorphin and GABA are colocalized in a population of medium-sized spiny neurons, the role of dynorphin-containing neurons in the NMDA-evoked release of 3H-DA has been investigated using the same superfusion procedure on rat striatal slices. (1) The NMDA (50 microM, 25 min application)-evoked release of 3H-DA was increased in the presence of naloxone (1 microM, continuously delivered) in both striatal compartments, the overall response being more elevated in the striosome-enriched area. (2) The TTX (1 microM, continuously delivered)-resistant NMDA-evoked responses were also enhanced in the presence of naloxone, but in this case, the disinhibitory effects of naloxone were similar in striosome- and matrix- enriched areas. (3) The selective kappa-agonist U-50488 (1 microM) totally reversed the naloxone-disinhibitory effect on the NMDA-evoked response in the matrix-enriched area, but only partially in the striosome-enriched area. It also completely prevented the disinhibitory effect of naloxone on the TTX-resistant NMDA-evoked release of 3H-DA in both compartments. (4) The bicuculline (5 microM)- and naloxone (1 microM)-disinhibitory effects on the NMDA-evoked release of 3H-DA were additive in the matrix- but not in the striosome-enriched areas. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
The Role of Collective Efficacy in Closing Student Achievement Gaps: A Mixed Methods Study of School Leadership for Excellence and Equity

ABSTRACT Previous research demonstrates that collective efficacy positively predicts students' academic achievement (e.g., Bandura, 1993; Goddard et al., 2000). However, unaddressed by the current literature is whether collective efficacy also works to reduce inequity by closing achievement gaps. To learn about the operation of collective efficacy, we designed a mixed-methods study, situated in the elementary and middle schools of one large urban district in Texas. Hierarchal linear modeling was employed to model the degree to which collective efficacy explained differences among schools in student mathematics achievement and the Black-White achievement gap. We also drew upon focus group data collected at 6 schools. We found that collective efficacy was associated with an increase in mathematics achievement as well a 50% reduction in the academic disadvantage experienced by Black students. Focus groups revealed the importance of school principals in supporting teacher collaboration and peer observation as well as a sustained focus on instructional improvement.
A modeling method to calibrate the interaction depth in 3-D position sensitive CdZnTe gamma-ray spectrometers

The gamma ray interaction depth in 3-D position sensitive CdZnTe detectors is currently determined by the pulse height ratio of the cathode signal to the anode pixel signal (C/A ratio). In experiments with our 3-D CdZnTe detectors, the photopeak area as a function of the C/A ratio deviates from the expected exponential attenuation with depth. This indicates that the C/A ratio is not proportional to the true interaction depth. This paper proposes a method to calibrate the measured C/A ratio to the interaction depth by modeling the signals from the cathode and anode pixels. Knowing the detector's mobility-lifetime products of the electrons and holes from measurements, the expected pulse heights of the signals from the cathode and anode pixels can be calculated for different interaction depths. The relationship between the C/A ratios and the interaction depths can then be determined and used as the calibration. The calculation for our 3-D CdZnTe detectors shows that an 8% error in depth determination is incurred without the calibration.
I want to answer; who has a question?: Yahoo! answers recommender system

Yahoo! Answers is currently one of the most popular question answering systems. We claim however that its user experience could be significantly improved if it could route the "right question" to the "right user. " Indeed, while some users would rush answering a question such as "what should I wear at the prom? ," others would be upset simply being exposed to it. We argue here that Community Question Answering sites in general and Yahoo! Answers in particular, need a mechanism that would expose users to questions they can relate to and possibly answer. We propose here to address this need via a multi-channel recommender system technology for associating questions with potential answerers on Yahoo! Answers. One novel aspect of our approach is exploiting a wide variety of content and social signals users regularly provide to the system and organizing them into channels. Content signals relate mostly to the text and categories of questions and associated answers, while social signals capture the various user interactions with questions, such as asking, answering, voting, etc. We fuse and generalize known recommendation approaches within a single symmetric framework, which incorporates and properly balances multiple types of signals according to channels. Tested on a large scale dataset, our model exhibits good performance, clearly outperforming standard baselines.
Spatial Stochastic Volatility for Lattice Data

Spatial heteroskedasticity may arise jointly with spatial autocorrelation in lattice data collected from agricultural trials and environmental studies. This leads to spatial clustering not only in the level but also in the variation of the data, the latter of which may be very important, for example, in constructing prediction intervals. This article introduces a spatial stochastic volatility (SSV) component into the widely used conditional autoregressive (CAR) model to capture the spatial clustering in heteroskedasticity. The SSV component is a mean zero, conditionally independent Gaussian process given a latent spatial process of the variances. The logarithm of the latent variance process is specified by an intrinsic Gaussian Markov random field. The SSV model relaxes the traditional homoskedasticity assumption for spatial heterogeneity and brings greater flexibility to the popular spatial statistical models. The Bayesian method is used for inference. The full conditional distribution of the heteroskedasticity components can be shown to be log-concave, which facilitates an adaptive rejection sampling algorithm. Application to the well-known wheat yield data illustrates that incorporating spatial stochastic volatility may reveal the spatial heteroskedasticity hidden from existing analyses.
Mastomys natalensis and Lassa Fever, West Africa

PCR screening of 1,482 murid rodents from 13 genera caught in 18 different localities of Guinea, West Africa, showed Lassa virus infection only in molecularly typed Mastomys natalensis. Distribution of this rodent and relative abundance compared with M. erythroleucus correlates geographically with Lassa virus seroprevalence in humans.
Enjoyment in a recreational sing-along group for people with aphasia and their caregivers

ABSTRACT Background: Literature exists documenting connections between music, health, and well-being. Group singing involving people with aphasia (PwA) and caregivers may be an enjoyable, leisure activity contributing to a successful life that includes aphasia. However, the benefits of group singing are only achieved if programming is sustainable. Little has been published about aspects of such programs that result in greater enjoyment, and by potential extension, reduced attrition. Aims: To explore the feasibility of a recreational sing-along group for PwA and their caregivers that results in enjoyment. Methods and Procedures: Study participants included five PwA, each accompanied by one caregiver. Prior to initiating the study, PwA were asked about their musical experience and their perceived relationship with their caregiver. Caregivers answered questions about their perceived levels of stress/burden. After participation in 10 group sing-along sessions, post-participation information was gathered so that the sing-along program could be modified if necessary to meet the interests of the participants. Post-participation information included questionnaires and interviews including ratings of song preferences (worded, non-worded, familiar, novel), environmental aspects of the sing-along, group dynamics, and the impact on caregiver stress/burden. Field notes maintained by the authors were used to support findings. Outcomes and Results: Participants (PwA and caregivers) believed a public setting with meetings once every two weeks for at least 90 min would be more enjoyable than shorter weekly sessions. PwA with less musical experience rated the sing-along experience as more enjoyable than those with more experience. Both PwA and their caregivers expressed interest in singing worded songs, even when they found them less enjoyable, explaining that they believed it might have a positive impact on word finding skills for the PwA. Familiar music was more enjoyable to sing than novel songs. PwA enjoyed having their caregivers participate in the sing-along sessions rather than singing without them. Caregivers enjoyed singing with the group, but also welcomed the opportunity to have unstructured free time away from their partner with aphasia. Caregivers agreed the sing-along experience lowered their stress to a small degree. Conclusions: The musical background of participants and song repertoire appear to play an important role in singing enjoyment. Overall, the sing-along group was perceived by the participants as an enjoyable social activity for both PwA and their caregivers. Notably, however, participation motivation was partially influenced by an underlying belief in the therapeutic speech-language potential of the activity.
Clinical Correlates of NRAS and BRAF Mutations in Primary Human Melanoma

Purpose:NRAS and BRAF mutations are common in cutaneous melanomas, although rarely detected mutually in the same tumor. Distinct clinical correlates of these mutations have not been described, despite in vitro data suggesting enhanced oncogenic effects. This study was designed to test the hypothesis that primary human cutaneous melanomas harboring mutations in NRAS or BRAF display a more aggressive clinical phenotype than tumors wild type at both loci. Experimental Design: Microdissection of 223 primary melanomas was carried out, followed by determination of the NRAS and BRAF mutational status. Genotypic findings were correlated with features known to influence tumor behavior including age, gender, Breslow depth, Clark level, mitotic rate, the presence of ulceration, and American Joint Committee on Cancer (AJCC) staging. Results: Breslow depth and Clark level varied significantly among the genotypes, with NRAS mutants showing the deepest levels and wild-type tumors the least depth. Ulceration also differed significantly among the genotypes, with BRAF mutants demonstrating the highest rate. In addition, tumors with mutated NRAS were more likely to be located on the extremities. Patients whose tumors carried either mutation presented with more advanced AJCC stages compared with patients with wild-type tumors, and specifically, were more likely to have stage III disease at diagnosis. Overall survival did not differ among the 3 groups. Conclusions: Distinct clinical phenotypes exist for melanomas bearing NRAS and BRAF mutations, whether considered together or separately, and are associated with features known to predict aggressive tumor behavior. The impact of these mutations is most evident at earlier stages of disease progression. Clin Cancer Res; 17(2); 229–35. ©2010 AACR. Clin Cancer Res; 17(2); 229–35. ©2010 AACR.
Models for Evaluating and Planning City Logistics Systems

City logistics aims to reduce the nuisances associated to freight transportation in urban areas while supporting their economic and social development. The fundamental idea is to view individual stakeholders and decisions as components of an integrated logistics system. This implies the coordination of shippers, carriers, and movements as well as the consolidation of loads of several customers and carriers into the same environment-friendly vehicles. City logistics explicitly aims to optimize such advanced urban transportation systems. We focus on a challenging city logistics planning issue, the integrated short-term scheduling of operations and management of resources, for the general case involving a two-tiered distribution structure. We investigate the main issues related to the problem, introduce a new problem class, propose both a general model and formulations for the main system components, and identify promising solution avenues.
Language exclusionary behavior and attitudes toward immigrants

Immigrants often speak languages that natives do not understand, leading to intentional or inadvertent ostracism, which in turn may increase perceptions of threat. For example, English language participants excluded from a conversation in Spanish report more negative reactions than participants excluded in English (Hitlan, Kelly, & Zarate, 2010). Integrated threat theory (ITT) suggests that there are four threats that lead to prejudice toward outgroups such as immigrants: realistic threat, symbolic threat, intergroup anxiety, and negative stereotypes (Stephan, Ybarra, & Bachman, 1999). The current study expanded upon prior research by ostracizing participants in English, Spanish, or Arabic and then measuring participants' attitudes toward immigrants using measures of these four ITT concepts. Further, the personality trait of social dominance orientation (SDO) correlates with unfavorable attitudes toward immigrants (Esses, Jackson, & Armstrong, 1998). People high in SDO want their social group to dominate and subordinate groups they consider inferior, so they may be particularly bothered by language-based ostracism. In this study, I also examined whether SDO moderated the effects of ostracism in situations where participants were ostracized. Eighty-five college students participated in a computer-based chat with a confederate posing as two other participants. Each participant was randomly assigned to one of four conditions: Spanish-language exclusion, Arabiclanguage exclusion, English-language exclusion, or English-language inclusion (control group). Excluded participants reported feeling less accepted than included participants. Furthermore, participants in the Spanish and Arabic exclusion conditions reported feeling less accepted than the participants in the English exclusion condition. Unexpectedly, language-based exclusion did not affect attitudes toward immigrants and the effects were not moderated by SDO. However, participants who were higher in SDO reported greater realistic threat, symbolic threat, and negative stereotypes. Although language-based exclusion decreases feelings of acceptance, it may not change or create negative attitudes toward immigrant populations. LANGUAGE EXCLUSIONARY BERA VIOR AND ATTITUDES TOW ARD IMMIGRANTS A Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree
Performance analysis of space-time block codes over keyhole Nakagami-m fading channels

In multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) fading environments, degenerate channel phenomena, called keyholes or pinholes, may exist under the realistic assumption that the spatial fading is uncorrelated at the transmitter and the receiver, but the channel has a rank-deficient transfer matrix. In this paper, we analyze the exact average symbol error rate (SER) of orthogonal space-time block codes (STBCs) with M-PSK and M-QAM constellations over Nakagami-m fading channels in the presence of the keyhole. We derive the moment generating function (MGF) of instantaneous signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) after space-time block decoding (signal combining) in such channels. Using a well-known MGF-based analysis approach, we express the average SER of the STBC in the form of single finite-range integrals whose integrand contains only the derived MGF. Numerical results show that the keyhole significantly degrades the SER performance of the STBC from idealistic behaviors in independent identically distributed MIMO channels.
“Black” Responses Dominate Macaque Primary Visual Cortex V1

Achromatic visual information is transferred from the retina to the brain through two parallel channels: ON-center cells carry “white” information and OFF-center cells “black” information (Nelson et al., 1978; Schiller, 1982; Schiller et al., 1986). Responses of ON and OFF retinal and thalamic neurons are approximately equal in magnitude (Krüger and Fischer, 1975; Kremers et al., 1993), but psychophysical studies have shown that humans detect light decrements (black) better and faster than increments (white) (Blackwell, 1946; Short, 1966; Krauskopf, 1980; Whittle, 1986; Bowen et al., 1989; Chan and Tyler, 1992; Kontsevich and Tyler, 1999; Chubb and Nam, 2000; Dannemiller and Stephens, 2001). From recordings of single-cell activity in the macaque monkey's primary visual cortex (V1), we found that black-dominant neurons substantially outnumbered white-dominant neurons in the corticocortical output layers 2/3, but the numbers of black- and white-dominant neurons were nearly equal in the thalamocortical input layer 4c. These results strongly suggest that the black-over-white preference is generated or greatly amplified in V1. The predominance of OFF neurons in layers 2/3 of V1, which provide visual input to higher cortical areas, may explain why human subjects detect black more easily than white. Furthermore, our results agree with human EEG and fMRI findings that V1 responses to decrements are stronger than to increments, though the OFF/ON imbalance we found in layers 2/3 of macaque V1 is much larger than in the whole V1 population in the human V1 experiments (Zemon et al., 1988, 1995; Olman et al., 2008).
Application of an original RT-PCR–ELISA multiplex assay for MDR1 and MRP, along with p53 determination in node-positive breast cancer patients

The long-term prognostic value of tumoural MDR1 and MRP, along with p53 and other classical parameters, was analysed on 85 node-positive breast cancer patients receiving anthracycline-based adjuvant therapy. All patients underwent tumour resection plus irradiation and adjuvant chemotherapy (the majority receiving fluorouracil–epirubicin–cyclophosphamide). Median follow-up for the 54 alive patients was 7.8 years. Mean age was 53.7 years (range 28–79) and 54 patients were post-menopausal. MDR1 and MRP expression were quantified according to an original reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction multiplex assay with colourimetric enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay detection(β2-microglobulin as control). P53 protein was analysed using an immunoluminometric assay (Sangtec). MDR1 expression varied within an 11-fold range (mean 94, median 83), MRP within a 45-fold range (mean 315, median 242) and p53 protein from the limit of detection (0.002 ng mg–1) up to 35.71 ng mg–1(mean 1.18, median 0.13 ng mg–1). P53 protein was significantly higher in oestrogen receptor (ER)-negative than in ER-positive tumours (P = 0.039). The higher the p53, the lower the MDR1 expression (P = 0.015, r = –0.27). P53 was not linked to progesterone receptor (PR) status, S phase fraction, or MRP. Significantly greater MDR1 expression was observed in grade I tumours (P = 0.029). No relationship was observed between MDR1 and MRP. Neither MDR1 nor MRP was linked to ER or PR status. Unlike MDR1, MRP was correlated with the S phase: the greater the MRP, the lower the S phase (P = 0.006, r = –0.42). Univariate Cox analyses revealed that MDR1, MRP, p53 and S phase had no significant influence on progression-free or specific survival. A tendency suggested that the greater the p53, the shorter the progression-free survival (P = 0.076 as continuous and 0.069 as dichotomous). © 2000 Cancer Research Campaign
The neonicotinoid clothianidin interferes with navigation of the solitary bee Osmia cornuta in a laboratory test

ABSTRACT Pollinating insects provide a vital ecosystem service to crops and wild plants. Exposure to low doses of neonicotinoid insecticides has sub-lethal effects on social pollinators such as bumblebees and honeybees, disturbing their navigation and interfering with their development. Solitary Hymenoptera are also very important ecosystem service providers, but the sub-lethal effects of neonicotinoids have not yet been studied well in those animals. We analyzed the ability of walking Osmia to remember a feeding place in a small environment and found that Osmia remembers the feeding place well after 4 days of training. Uptake of field-realistic amounts of the neonicotinoid clothianidin (0.76 ng per bee) altered the animals' sensory responses to the visual environment and interfered with the retrieval of navigational memory. We conclude that the neonicotinoid clothianidin compromises visual guidance and the use of navigational memory in the solitary bee Osmia cornuta. Summary: The neonicotinoid clothianidin, frequently used as a pesticide in agriculture, interferes with navigation of the solitary bee Osmia cornuta in a laboratory test.