Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Differential Impact of EGFR-Targeted Therapies on Hypoxia Responses: Implications for Treatment Sensitivity in Triple-Negative Metastatic Breast Cancer

Background In solid tumors, such as breast cancer, cells are exposed to hypoxia. Cancer cells adapt their metabolism by activating hypoxia-inducible factors (HIFs) that promote the transcription of genes involved in processes such as cell survival, drug resistance and metastasis. HIF-1 is also induced in an oxygen-independent manner through the activation of epidermal growth factor receptor tyrosine kinase (EGFR-TK). Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is a subtype of invasive breast cancer characterized by negative expression of hormonal and HER2 receptors, and this subtype generally overexpresses EGFR. Sensitivity to three EGFR inhibitors (cetuximab, gefitinib and lapatinib, an HER2/EGFR-TK inhibitor) was evaluated in a metastatic TNBC cell model (MDA-MB-231), and the impact of these drugs on the activity and stability of HIF was assessed. Methodology/Principal Findings MDA-MB-231 cells were genetically modified to stably express an enhanced green fluorescent protein (EGFP) induced by hypoxia; the Ca9-GFP cell model reports HIF activity, whereas GFP-P564 reports HIF stability. The reporter signal was monitored by flow cytometry. HIF-1 DNA-binding activity, cell migration and viability were also evaluated in response to EGFR inhibitors. Cell fluorescence signals strongly increased under hypoxic conditions (> 30-fold). Cetuximab and lapatinib did not affect the signal induced by hypoxia, whereas gefitinib sharply reduced its intensity in both cell models and also diminished HIF-1 alpha levels and HIF-1 DNA-binding activity in MDA-MB-231 cells. This gefitinib feature was associated with its ability to inhibit MDA-MB-231 cell migration and to induce cell mortality in a dose-dependent manner. Cetuximab and lapatinib had no effect on cell migration or cell viability. Conclusion Resistance to cetuximab and lapatinib and sensitivity to gefitinib were associated with their ability to modulate HIF activity and stability. In conclusion, downregulation of HIF-1 through EGFR signaling seems to be required for the induction of a positive response to EGFR-targeted therapies in TNBC.
A Numerically Stable Solver for Positive Semidefinite Quadratic Programs Based on Nonnegative Least Squares

This paper proposes a new algorithm for solving convex quadratic programs (QP) subject to linear inequality and equality constraints. The method extends an approach recently proposed by the author for solving strictly convex QP's using nonnegative least squares, by making it numerically more robust and able to handle also the nonstrictly convex case, equality constraints, and warm starting from an initial guess. Robustness is achieved by introducing an outer proximal-point iteration scheme that regularizes the problem without altering the solution, and by adaptively weighting the least squares problems encountered while solving the problem. The performance of the resulting QP solver in terms of speed and robustness in the single precision arithmetic is assessed against other optimization algorithms tailored to embedded model predictive control applications.
fMRI Guided rTMS Evidence for Reduced Left Prefrontal Involvement after Task Practice

Introduction Cognitive tasks that do not change the required response for a stimulus over time (‘consistent mapping’) show dramatically improved performance after relative short periods of practice. This improvement is associated with reduced brain activity in a large network of brain regions, including left prefrontal and parietal cortex. The present study used fMRI-guided repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS), which has been shown to reduce processing efficacy, to examine if the reduced activity in these regions also reflects reduced involvement, or possibly increased efficiency. Methods First, subjects performed runs of a Sternberg task in the scanner with novel or practiced target-sets. This data was used to identify individual sites for left prefrontal and parietal peak brain activity, as well as to examine the change in activity related to practice. Outside of the scanner, real and sham rTMS was applied at left prefrontal and parietal cortex to examine their involvement novel and practiced conditions. Results Prefrontal as well as parietal rTMS significantly reduced target accuracy for novel targets. Prefrontal, but not parietal, rTMS interference was significantly lower for practiced than novel target-sets. rTMS did not affect non-target accuracy, or reaction time in any condition. Discussion These results show that task practice in a consistent environment reduces involvement of the prefrontal cortex. Our findings suggest that prefrontal cortex is predominantly involved in target maintenance and comparison, as rTMS interference was only detectable for targets. Findings support process switching hypotheses that propose that practice creates the possibility to select a response without the need to compare with target items. Our results also support the notion that practice allows for redistribution of limited maintenance resources.
Rational Extremism: The Political Economy of Radicalism

Introduction 1. The problem of extremism Part I. Groups: 2. Social interactions, trust and group solidarity 3. Some illustrations and a general framework Part II. Extremism: 4. The calculus of discontent 5. Can suicide bombing be rational? 6. Religion and suicide terror Part III. Revolutions, Nationalism and Jihad: 7. Rational revolutions 8. Slobodan Milosevic and the fire of nationalism 9. 'Jihad vs McWorld' revisited Conclusion 10. Summary of propositions and policy implications.
Social isolation dysregulates endocrine and behavioral stress while increasing malignant burden of spontaneous mammary tumors

In a life span study, we examined how the social environment regulates naturally occurring tumor development and malignancy in genetically prone Sprague–Dawley rats. We randomly assigned this gregarious species to live either alone or in groups of five female rats. Mammary tumor burden among social isolates increased to 84 times that of age-matched controls, as did malignancy, specifically a 3.3 relative risk for ductal carcinoma in situ and invasive ductal carcinoma, the most common early breast cancers in women. Importantly, isolation did not extend ovarian function in late middle age; in fact, isolated animals were exposed to lower levels of estrogen and progesterone in the middle-age period of mammary tumor growth, with unchanged tumor estrogen and progesterone receptor status. Isolates, however, did develop significant dysregulation of corticosterone responses to everyday stressors manifest in young adulthood, months before tumor development, and persisting into old age. Among isolates, corticosterone response to an acute stressor was enhanced and recovery was markedly delayed, each associated with increased mammary tumor progression. In addition to being stressed and tumor prone, an array of behavioral measures demonstrated that socially isolated females possessed an anxious, fearful, and vigilant phenotype. Our model provides a framework for studying the interaction of social neglect with genetic risk to identify mechanisms whereby psychosocial stressors increase growth and malignancy of breast cancer.
Probabilistic anatomical connectivity derived from the microscopic persistent angular structure of cerebral tissue

Recently developed methods to extract the persistent angular structure (PAS) of axonal fibre bundles from diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data are applied to drive probabilistic fibre tracking, designed to provide estimates of anatomical cerebral connectivity. The behaviour of the PAS function in the presence of realistic data noise is modelled for a range of single and multiple fibre configurations. This allows probability density functions (PDFs) to be generated that are parametrized according to the anisotropy of individual fibre populations. The PDFs are incorporated in a probabilistic fibre-tracking method to allow the estimation of whole-brain maps of anatomical connection probability. These methods are applied in two exemplar experiments in the corticospinal tract to show that it is possible to connect the entire primary motor cortex (M1) when tracing from the cerebral peduncles, and that the reverse experiment of tracking from M1 successfully identifies high probability connection via the pyramidal tracts. Using the extracted PAS in probabilistic fibre tracking allows higher specificity and sensitivity than previously reported fibre tracking using diffusion-weighted MRI in the corticospinal tract.
Noise-induced hearing loss is correlated with alterations in the expression of GABAB receptors and PKC gamma in the murine cochlear nucleus complex

Noise overexposure may induce permanent noise-induced hearing loss (NIHL). The cochlear nucleus complex (CNC) is the entry point for sensory information in the central auditory system. Impairments in gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA)—mediated synaptic transmission in the CNC have been implicated in the pathogenesis of auditory disorders. However, the role of protein kinase C (PKC) signaling pathway in GABAergic inhibition in the CNC in NIHL remains elusive. Thus, we investigated the alterations of glutamic acid decarboxylase 67 (GAD67, the chemical marker for GABA-containing neurons), PKC γ subunit (PKCγ) and GABAB receptor (GABABR) expression in the CNC using transgenic GAD67-green fluorescent protein (GFP) knock-in mice, BALB/c mice and C57 mice. Immunohistochemical results indicate that the GFP-labeled GABAergic neurons were distributed in the molecular layer (ML) and fusiform cell layer (FCL) of the dorsal cochlear nucleus (DCN). We found that 69.91% of the GFP-positive neurons in the DCN were immunopositive for both PKCγ and GABABR1. The GAD67-positive terminals made contacts with PKCγ/GABABR1 colocalized neurons. Then we measured the changes of auditory thresholds in mice after noise exposure for 2 weeks, and detected the GAD67, PKCγ, and GABABR expression at mRNA and protein levels in the CNC. With noise over-exposure, there was a reduction in GABABR accompanied by an increase in PKCγ expression, but no significant change in GAD67 expression. In summary, our results demonstrate that alterations in the expression of PKCγ and GABABRs may be involved in impairments in GABAergic inhibition within the CNC and the development of NIHL.
Financial Markets and the Allocation of Capital

Financial markets appear to improve the allocation of capital. Across 65 countries, those with developed financial sectors increase investment more in their growing industries, and decrease investment more in their declining industries, than those with undeveloped financial sectors. The efficiency of capital allocation is negatively correlated with the extent of state ownership in the economy, positively correlated with the amount of firm-specific information in domestic stock returns, and positively correlated with the legal protection of minority investors. In particular, strong minority investor rights appear to curb overinvestment in declining industries.
Scaling the Effectiveness of Existing Compressive Sensing in Multimedia Contents

Compression has always played a crucial role in storage and transmission of heavier multimedia files. The existences of compression algorithms are more than two decade old. The normal compression algorithms are sometimes not required to process a signal in many cases where the signals are sparse. In such cases, compressive sensing highly contributes and compensates the issues of conventional compression algorithms as it performs sampling as well as compression at a same time. The concept of compressive sensing is quite new and is not much in matured stage. Our findings reported in this paper is a result of observation being carried out on all major research journals, which states that there are little amount of studies being done on compressive sensing and reconstruction of multimedia contents. The paper also discusses about the significant research gap and evaluates teh effectiveness of existing techniques.
Microseismic joint location and anisotropic velocity inversion for hydraulic fracturing in a tight Bakken reservoir

ABSTRACTTo improve the accuracy of microseismic event locations, we developed a new inversion method with double-difference constraints for determining the hypocenters and the anisotropic velocity model for unconventional reservoirs. We applied this method to a microseismic data set monitoring a Middle Bakken completion in the Beaver Lodge area of North Dakota. Geophone arrays in four observation wells improved the ray coverage for the velocity inversion. Using an accurate anisotropic velocity model is important to correctly assess the height growth of the hydraulically induced fractures in the Middle Bakken. Our results showed that (1) moderate-to-strong anisotropy exists in all studied sedimentary layers, especially in the Upper and Lower Bakken shale formations, where the Thomsen parameters (ϵ and γ) can be greater than 0.4, (2) all the events selected for high signal-to-noise ratio and used for the joint velocity inversion are located in the Bakken and overlying Lodgepole formations, i.e., no events a.
A quantitative study into Chinese EFL learners’ lexical inference ability and strategy use in EFL reading

The purpose of this study is to investigate, from the perspectives of foreign language proficiency, majors and gender, the differentiations and homologies of Chinese undergraduates in terms of Lexical Inference Ability (LIA) and Lexical Inference Strategy Use (LISU). Three research questions are put forward and answered accordingly. The results indicate that: subject’s LIA and LISU are influenced differentially by their language proficiency, majors and gender. LISU can predicate LIA effectively. Research limitations and implications are also discussed in this study.
On models and query languages for probabilistic processes

Probabilistic processes appear naturally in various contexts, with applications to Business Processes, XML data management and more. Many models for specifying and querying such processes exist in the literature; a main goal of research in this area is to design models that are expressive enough to capture real-life processes and analysis tasks, but at the same time allow for efficient query evaluation. We depict the model established in [13, 16, 17, 18], and claim that it achieves a good balance between expressivity and query evaluation complexity. We compare and contrast the model with other common models for probabilistic processes, highlighting the different choices made in models design and their effect on expressivity and incurred complexity.
Urban Outcasts: A comparative sociology of advanced marginality

Breaking with the exoticizing cast of public discourse and conventional research, Urban Outcasts takes the reader inside the black ghetto of Chicago and the deindustrializing banlieue of Paris to discover that urban marginality is not everywhere the same. Drawing on a wealth of original field, survey and historical data, Loïc Wacquant shows that the involution of America's urban core after the 1960s is due not to the emergence of an 'underclass', but to the joint withdrawal of market and state fostered by public policies of racial separation and urban abandonment. In European cities, by contrast, the spread of districts of 'exclusion' does not herald the formation of ghettos. It stems from the decomposition of working-class territories under the press of mass unemployment, the casualization of work and the ethnic mixing of populations hitherto segregated, spawning urban formations akin to 'anti-ghettos'.
African Americans and Graduate Social Work Education

This article reports on a study of career influences for a sample of African-American and other black graduates of MSW programs. The study isolated significant relationships between enrollment influences and selected demographic and career-related variables. ”Very important“ influences were career advancement, acquisition of new skills, professional status and credibility, and understanding professionalism in social work. Desire for professional development in social work was the dominant influence. Findings suggest that recruitment of African-American/black graduate social work students should incorporate strategies that address issues of job satisfaction, and recognize career priorities and professional aspirations. Implications for graduate social work education are discussed.
Annotations and Functional Analyses of the Rice WRKY Gene Superfamily Reveal Positive and Negative Regulators of Abscisic Acid Signaling in Aleurone Cells1[w]

The WRKY proteins are a superfamily of regulators that control diverse developmental and physiological processes. This family was believed to be plant specific until the recent identification of WRKY genes in nonphotosynthetic eukaryotes. We have undertaken a comprehensive computational analysis of the rice (Oryza sativa) genomic sequences and predicted the structures of 81 OsWRKY genes, 48 of which are supported by full-length cDNA sequences. Eleven OsWRKY proteins contain two conserved WRKY domains, while the rest have only one. Phylogenetic analyses of the WRKY domain sequences provide support for the hypothesis that gene duplication of single- and two-domain WRKY genes, and loss of the WRKY domain, occurred in the evolutionary history of this gene family in rice. The phylogeny deduced from the WRKY domain peptide sequences is further supported by the position and phase of the intron in the regions encoding the WRKY domains. Analyses for chromosomal distributions reveal that 26% of the predicted OsWRKY genes are located on chromosome 1. Among the dozen genes tested, OsWRKY24, -51, -71, and -72 are induced by abscisic acid (ABA) in aleurone cells. Using a transient expression system, we have demonstrated that OsWRKY24 and -45 repress ABA induction of the HVA22 promoter-β-glucuronidase construct, while OsWRKY72 and -77 synergistically interact with ABA to activate this reporter construct. This study provides a solid base for functional genomics studies of this important superfamily of regulatory genes in monocotyledonous plants and reveals a novel function for WRKY genes, i.e. mediating plant responses to ABA.
BwE: Flexible, Hierarchical Bandwidth Allocation for WAN Distributed Computing

WAN bandwidth remains a constrained resource that is economically infeasible to substantially overprovision. Hence, it is important to allocate capacity according to service priority and based on the incremental value of additional allocation. For example, it may be the highest priority for one service to receive 10Gb/s of bandwidth but upon reaching such an allocation, incremental priority may drop sharply favoring allocation to other services. Motivated by the observation that individual flows with fixed priority may not be the ideal basis for bandwidth allocation, we present the design and implementation of Bandwidth Enforcer (BwE), a global, hierarchical bandwidth allocation infrastructure. BwE supports: i) service-level bandwidth allocation following prioritized bandwidth functions where a service can represent an arbitrary collection of flows, ii)independent allocation and delegation policies according to user-defined hierarchy, all accounting for a global view of bandwidth and failure conditions, iii) multi-path forwarding common in traffic-engineered networks, and iv) a central administrative point to override (perhaps faulty) policy during exceptional conditions. BwE has delivered more service efficient bandwidth utilization and simpler management in production for multiple years.
Migrating Temperature “Thermo-Chromatographic” Pulses (TCP) Initiated by Radio-Frequency (RF) Heating

Abstract In the present study, the astonishing influence of water dosage on a purged dry packed bed of NaY zeolite in the presence of an electric field with a frequency of 13.56 MHz was investigated. The injection of a small amount of water to the inlet of the bed led to pronounced selective heating of the inlet zone by more than 150 K. Thus, water represented a very effective coupling medium for dielectric heating. The selectively heated zone then slowly moved through the whole packed bed and a water pulse finally left the zeolite. This effect correlated with a coupled water and heat flux was called thermo-chromatographic pulse (TCP) emphasizing its analogy to chromatography. The phenomenon could not be performed by using conventional (convective) or microwave heating. It was demonstrated under various conditions and explained by a new model based on own experimental results as well as data from literature. The model will be the objective of a forthcoming publication.
Associations between meal complexity and social context in four Nordic countries

Contemporary eating is often portrayed by images of snacking, solitary grazing, disintegration of sociability, demise of family meals, and increasingly irregular eating patterns –what Claude Fischler has famously described as gastroanomy. Inspired by the concept of eating system, this article contributes to the discussion about the ongoing changes by examining the relation between meal complexity, sociability and the duration of meals in contemporary Nordic societies. We examine the differences in meal complexity between four Nordic countries, Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden, focusing on two main meals, lunch and dinner. The analysis builds on the concept of eating system, examining the effect sociability has on meal complexity. In the end we ask whether complexity can better be explained by social context, or if it, rather, results from social differentiation. The data (N=8248) are drawn from the Food in Nordic Everyday Life survey conducted in Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden in 2012. The Finns and Swedes typically had two hot meals a day, whereas the Danes and Norwegians only had one. Moreover, the differences in the complexity were the greatest in hot dinners, the Danes and the Swedes having the most elaborate dinners. A marked proportion of meals were eaten within structured conditions either at workplace or home. The presence of any commensal partners increased the complexity of hot dinners, as did the longer duration of the meal. Situational factors were important in explaining differences in meal complexity, but social background, apart from age, did not convey many significant differences.