Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Prognostic value of immunohistochemical expression of the c‐erbB‐2 oncoprotein in metastasic prostate cancer

It is well established that the activation of proto‐oncogenes could trigger uncontrolled cell growth and cancer development. Although this correlation has already been evidenced in several human tumors, no conclusive studies have related oncogene activation with the development of prostatic neoplasia. Nevertheless, some reports suggest that c‐erbB‐2, which is a prognostic marker in breast cancer, could be implicated in the development of prostatic adenocarcinoma. We have studied the expression of the c‐erbB‐2 oncoprotein in primary prostatic tissue in a series of 70 patients with metastasic disease, by means of immunohistochemistry. The NCL‐B 11 anti‐c‐erbB‐2 monoclonal antibody was used, and the immunoreactivity was quantified by image analysis. The overall rate of prostatic‐tissue sections presenting positive c‐erbB‐2 immunostaining was 64.3%. No significant relation was observed between histological grade and c‐erbB‐2 over‐expression or severity of the disease, based on the extent of metastases. The average specific survival in patients with c‐erbB‐2 over‐expression was 33 months, while it was 54 in patients with c‐erbB‐2 negativity; p < 0.034. These results, as well as the logistic‐regression analysis, suggest that expression of c‐erbB‐2 oncoprotein would be considered as an independent prognostic factor of metastatic prostate cancer. Moreover, it could discriminate between the prognosis of patients with Gleason score 2 to 7 and those with score 8 to 10. Our results suggest that the expression of c‐erbB‐2 oncoprotein in primary prostatic tissue could have a prognostic value in patients with metastatic prostate cancer. Int. J. Cancer (Pred. Oncol.) 84:421–425, 1999. © 1999 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Initial and Eventual Software Quality Relating to Continuous Integration in GitHub

The constant demand for new features and bug fixes are forcing software projects to shorten cycles and deliver updates ever faster, while sustaining software quality. The availability of inexpensive, virtualized, cloud-computing has helped shorten schedules, by enabling continuous integration (CI) on demand. Platforms like GitHub support CI in-the-cloud. In projects using CI, a user submitting a pull request triggers a CI step. Besides speeding up build and test, this fortuitously creates voluminous archives of build and test successes and failures. CI is a relatively new phenomenon, and these archives allow a detailed study of CI. How many problems are exposed? Where do they occur? What factors affect CI failures? Does the "initial quality" as ascertained by CI predict how many bugs will later appear ("eventual quality") in the code? In this paper, we undertake a large-scale, fine resolution study of these records, to better understand CI processes, the nature, and predictors of CI failures, and the relationship of CI failures to the eventual quality of the code. We find that: a) CI failures appear to be concentrated in a few files, just like normal bugs; b) CI failures are not very highly correlated with eventual failures; c) The use of CI in a pull request doesn't necessarily mean the code in that request is of good quality.
Modulation of the Expression of the Transcription Factors T-Bet and GATA-3 in Immortalized Human Endometrial Stromal Cells (HESCs) by Sex Steroid Hormones and cAMP

T-bet and GATA-3 are known to regulate cytokine expression in T lymphocytes, and cytokines have been implicated in endometrial regulation and implantation. Previous work showed that female steroid hormones modulate the expression of T-bet in endometrial epithelial cells, suggesting a mechanism for local immune regulation in the human endometrium. We hypothesized that stromal cells are involved in immune regulation, as they have been shown to exert paracrine effects on other endometrial cells and compartments and also secrete cytokines. The objective of this study was to examine the modulation of the gene expression of T-bet and GATA-3, and of the cytokines interferon γ (IFN-γ) and interleukin 4 (IL-4), by female steroid hormones, in human endometrial stromal cells (HESC) in long-term cultures (30 days) mimicking the normal menstrual cycle. T-bet and GATA-3 messenger RNA (mRNA) expression was detected by real-time polymerase chain reaction, and intracellular protein production was demonstrated by immunoblotting. In addition, secretion of IL-4 and IL-15 was measured by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. T-bet and IL-4 mRNA expression increased and GATA-3 decreased under decidualization conditions; IFN-γ was not detected. Secretion of IL-15 increased during decidualization, and IL-15 upregulated T-bet gene expression. In conclusion, gene expression of T-bet and GATA-3 by endometrial stromal cells is under hormonal conditions mimicking decidualization, and the results are consistent with an autocrine regulatory mechanism of IL-15 secretion and T-bet expression.
Large-scale Simple Question Answering with Memory Networks

Training large-scale question answering systems is complicated because training sources usually cover a small portion of the range of possible questions. This paper studies the impact of multitask and transfer learning for simple question answering; a setting for which the reasoning required to answer is quite easy, as long as one can retrieve the correct evidence given a question, which can be difficult in large-scale conditions. To this end, we introduce a new dataset of 100k questions that we use in conjunction with existing benchmarks. We conduct our study within the framework of Memory Networks (Weston et al., 2015) because this perspective allows us to eventually scale up to more complex reasoning, and show that Memory Networks can be successfully trained to achieve excellent performance.
Improving Cancer Related Symptom Management with Collaborative Healthware

We conducted a feasibility study of an innovative Internet-based system, designed to support collaboration between patients and providers around cancer related symptom management. Our objective was to demonstrate the system's potential to enhance communication and clinical decision making between patients and their providers. Considering the high prevalence of cancer related symptoms and their impact on patients' quality of life, enhanced collaboration regarding assessment and treatment could significantly reduce illness burden. Twenty-seven patients with known malignancy and twenty-nine oncology clinicians were interviewed to identify functional requirements for the system. Patients reported the ability, willingness and desire to use a computer to help them manage their cancer related symptoms. Physicians recognized the potential of this system to improve communication and collaboration around symptom management, but voiced concern regarding a potential increased workload. Nurse providers had greater interest in reviewing symptoms online than did their physician counterparts. Patients in this study believe that using an Internet based system to report their cancer related symptoms would improve the quality of the care they receive. Our findings suggest that both patients and clinicians are concerned about the management of cancer related symptoms and would use Internet-based tools if they were shown to improve care.
Clinical Utility of Plasma Glypican-3 and Osteopontin as Biomarkers of Hepatocellular Carcinoma

Background/Aims α-Fetoprotein (AFP) is the biomarker most widely used to detect hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), despite its suboptimal diagnostic accuracy. Glypican-3 (GPC3) and osteopontin (OPN) are secreted glycoproteins that are reportedly associated with tumorigenesis and metastasis. This study was conducted to evaluate the clinical utility of using plasma GPC3 and OPN as diagnostic biomarkers for HCC. Methods We measured the plasma levels of GPC3 and OPN in 120 HCC and 40 chronic liver disease (CLD) patients via an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. The diagnostic accuracy of each tumor marker was evaluated using receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis. Results The GPC3 levels in the HCC patients (75.8 ng/mL) were significantly higher (p=0.020) than the levels in patients with CLD (66.4 ng/mL). The area under the ROC curve (AUROC) values for GPC3 and OPN were 0.62 and 0.51, respectively. In subgroup analyses, including subgroups of HCC patients with low serum AFP and PIVKA II levels, the AUROC of GPC3 remained relatively high (0.66), and GPC3 showed a high sensitivity (62.1%) for detecting small HCC tumors. Conclusions The plasma levels of GPC3 and OPN demonstrated low diagnostic accuracy for HCC. However, GPC3 may have a complementary role in diagnosing HCC in patients with nondiagnostic levels of conventional tumor markers and with small-sized tumors.
Photovoice in mental illness research: A review and recommendations

In the past few decades, photovoice research has gained prominence, providing context rich insights through participants’ photographs and narratives. Emergent within the field of photovoice research have been health studies embracing diverse illness issues. The goal of this scoping review article was to describe the use of photovoice in mental illness, paying particular attention to the following: (1) the study design and methods, (2) empirical findings, and (3) dissemination strategies. Nine qualitative studies (seven drawing from primary and two secondary analyses) featuring diverse approaches to analysis of data comprising individual and/or focus group interviews using participant-produced photographs were included in the review. Described were participant’s experiences of living with mental illness and/or substance overuse, including feelings of loneliness and being marginalized, along with their support care needs (e.g. physical, emotional, and spiritual) to garner self-confidence, respite, and/or recovery. Empirically, the reviewed articles confirmed the value of participant-produced photographs for obtaining in-depth understandings about individual’s mental illness experiences while a focus on stigma and recovery was prominent. In terms of dissemination, while most of the published articles shared some participants’ photographs and narratives, less evident were strategies to actively engage the public or policymakers with the images. Recommendations for future photovoice research include conducting formal analyses of participant photographs and strategically lobbying policymakers and raising public awareness through virtual and “in person” photo exhibitions while de-stigmatizing and affirming the experiences of those who are challenged by mental illness.
2013 Winner: Liam Cheeseman

We are pleased to announce that the winner of the 2013 JCS prize is Liam Cheeseman for his paper entitled ‘Specific removal of TACC3–ch-TOG–clathrin at metaphase deregulates kinetochore fiber tension’ ([Cheeseman et al., 2013][1]). The prize, $1000, is awarded annually to a junior researcher
Noninvasive prenatal diagnosis of monogenic diseases by digital size selection and relative mutation dosage on DNA in maternal plasma

Prenatal diagnosis of monogenic diseases, such as cystic fibrosis and β-thalassemia, is currently offered as part of public health programs. However, current methods based on chorionic villus sampling and amniocentesis for obtaining fetal genetic material pose a risk to the fetus. Since the discovery of cell-free fetal DNA in maternal plasma, the noninvasive prenatal assessment of paternally inherited traits or mutations has been achieved. Due to the presence of background maternal DNA, which interferes with the analysis of fetal DNA in maternal plasma, noninvasive prenatal diagnosis of maternally inherited mutations has not been possible. Here we describe a digital relative mutation dosage (RMD) approach that determines if the dosages of the mutant and wild-type alleles of a disease-causing gene are balanced or unbalanced in maternal plasma. When applied to the testing of women heterozygous for the CD41/42 (–CTTT) and hemoglobin E mutations on HBB, digital RMD allows the fetal genotype to be deduced. The diagnostic performance of digital RMD is dependent on interplay between the fractional fetal DNA concentration and number of DNA molecules in maternal plasma. To achieve fetal genotype diagnosis at lower volumes of maternal plasma, fetal DNA enrichment is desired. We thus developed a digital nucleic acid size selection (NASS) strategy that effectively enriches the fetal DNA without additional plasma sampling or experimental time. We show that digital NASS can work in concert with digital RMD to increase the proportion of cases with classifiable fetal genotypes and to bring noninvasive prenatal diagnosis of monogenic diseases closer to reality.
Producing Guanxi: Sentiment, Self, and Subculture in a North China Village

Throughout China the formation of guanxi, or social connections, involves friends, families, colleagues, and acquaintances in complex networks of social support and sentimental attachment. Focusing on this process in one rural north China village, Fengjia, Andrew B. Kipnis shows what guanxi production reveals about the evolution of village political economy, kinship and gender, and local patterns of subjectivity in Dengist China. His work offers a detailed description of the communicative actions - such as gift giving, being a host or guest, participating in weddings or funerals - that produce, manage, and deny guanxi in a specific time and place. Kipnis also offers a rare comparative analysis of how these practices relate to the varied and variable phenomenon of guanxi throughout China and as it has changed over time. "Producing Guanxi" combines the theory of Pierre Bourdieu and the insights of symbolic anthropology to contest past portrayals of guanxi as either a function of Chinese political economics or an unchanging Confucian social structure. In this analysis guanxi emerges as a purposeful human effort that makes use of past cultural logics while generating new ones. By exploring the role of sentiment in the creation of self, Kipnis critiques recent theories of subjectivity for their narrow focus on language and discourse, and contributes to the anthropological discussion of comparative selfhood. Navigating a path between mainstream social science and abstract social theory, Kipnis presents a more nuanced examination of guanxi than has previously been available and contributes generally to our understanding of relationships and human action. His findings will interest students of Chinese society as well as scholars across the fields of anthropology, cultural studies, gender studies, and social psychology.
Monitoring Raccoon Rabies in Alabama: The Potential Effects of Habitat and Demographics

Density, morphometrics, and disease prevalence of raccoon populations were determined in 4 habitats (agriculture, riverine, managed, and forested) in central Alabama. In addition we monitored 71 collared raccoons to determine survival. Density estimates were similar in the agriculture (ag) and riverine habitats in central Alabama with 8 raccoons/km, and lower in the forested habitat at 5 raccoons/ km. Retention of juveniles did not appear to contribute to observed higher populations in the riverine and ag habitat. Although the riverine and ag, possibly due to supplemental resources, likely provide better habitat for raccoons, we found only body size in female raccoons to be different across habitats (P = 0.001). Humancaused mortality (either hunting or missing and presumed killed) was the main cause of mortality in several raccoon populations during fall; however, fall survival did not differ between the habitats (χ = 1.47, d.f. = 3, P = 0.69). Although rabies and distemper virus were prevalent in all habitats, they did not appear to contribute to mortality even with a high proportion of the population exhibiting positive CDV titers (ag – 44%, managed50%) and rabies titers (managed57% and riverine habitat-60%).
Culture, Society, Impulse, and Socialization

The question is: "What are the basic concepts in the field of social psychology? " Discussed first are the uses and limits of the terms "culture" and "society" important is the fact that the society idea points at the individual in associated life and not merely at his abstracted habitual outfit. Some conception of impulse of necessary to an effective social psychology; the movement away from instinctivist views has overlooked this fact. Crucial but much neglected is the socialization conception. No one knows in detail how children grow up in in our or any other society. Hypothetical examples and fragmentary observations are not a sufficient basis for a theory of human learning; minute studies will have to be made which are specifically oriented from the societal and impulse standpoints.
Business Cycles and Investment in Intangibles: Evidence from Spanish Firms

This paper tests the opportunity-cost theory using a panel of Spanish firms during the period 1991-2010. Under this theory, productivity-enhancing activities, such as R&D investment, should increase during downturns because of the fall in their relative cost – in terms of forgone output. This would imply that business cycles may have a (positive) long-term impact on productivity growth. In the spirit of Aghion, et al. (2007) we allow the impact of the cycle on R&D to vary between firms with different access to credit, finding that credit constraints may reverse the countercyclicality of R&D, even if it is optimal for them. We go one step further and explore whether other productivity-enhancing activities, like on-the-job training and the purchase of patents, follow a similar pattern. We find that on-the-job training expenditures are countercyclical and, unlike R&D investment, credit constraints seem not to affect their cyclical behavior. Investments in other intangibles, such as patent purchases, are found to be acyclical, also irrespective of financial constraints, which could suggest some kind of substitution between R&D and patent purchases over the cycle. Finally, complementarities between the different intangible investments and the traditional productive factors (labor and capital) are also investigated via production function estimates, in order to assess potential indirect effects of the cycle on long-run growth.
TV Language, Cultivation, and Perceived Vitality of Hungarians in Slovakia

This article presents a model of the associations between media use, ethnolinguistic identity, and ethnolinguistic vitality among minority Hungarian speakers living in Slovakia. Results of a cross-sectional survey study among high school students demonstrate that identity influences the language in which television is watched, which in turn influences perceptions of group vitality. The latter link is moderated by amount of television use, such that it is stronger among light television users. The results are discussed in terms of the importance of media use to minority language group identity and survival. Media choice and language use in a marginalized minority language group are central issues for the area of intergroup communication research.
An Unsupervised Approach for Automatic Activity Recognition Based on Hidden Markov Model Regression

Using supervised machine learning approaches to recognize human activities from on-body wearable accelerometers generally requires a large amount of labeled data. When ground truth information is not available, too expensive, time consuming or difficult to collect, one has to rely on unsupervised approaches. This paper presents a new unsupervised approach for human activity recognition from raw acceleration data measured using inertial wearable sensors. The proposed method is based upon joint segmentation of multidimensional time series using a Hidden Markov Model (HMM) in a multiple regression context. The model is learned in an unsupervised framework using the Expectation-Maximization (EM) algorithm where no activity labels are needed. The proposed method takes into account the sequential appearance of the data. It is therefore adapted for the temporal acceleration data to accurately detect the activities. It allows both segmentation and classification of the human activities. Experimental results are provided to demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed approach with respect to standard supervised and unsupervised classification approaches.
Function Secret Sharing: Improvements and Extensions

Function Secret Sharing (FSS), introduced by Boyle et al. (Eurocrypt 2015), provides a way for additively secret-sharing a function from a given function family F. More concretely, an m-party FSS scheme splits a function f : {0, 1}n -> G, for some abelian group G, into functions f1,. ,fm, described by keys k1,. ,km, such that f = f1 + . + fm and every strict subset of the keys hides f. A Distributed Point Function (DPF) is a special case where F is the family of point functions, namely functions f_{a,b} that evaluate to b on the input a and to 0 on all other inputs. FSS schemes are useful for applications that involve privately reading from or writing to distributed databases while minimizing the amount of communication. These include different flavors of private information retrieval (PIR), as well as a recent application of DPF for large-scale anonymous messaging. We improve and extend previous results in several ways: * Simplified FSS constructions. We introduce a tensoring operation for FSS which is used to obtain a conceptually simpler derivation of previous constructions and present our new constructions. * Improved 2-party DPF. We reduce the key size of the PRG-based DPF scheme of Boyle et al. roughly by a factor of 4 and optimize its computational cost. The optimized DPF significantly improves the concrete costs of 2-server PIR and related primitives. * FSS for new function families. We present an efficient PRG-based 2-party FSS scheme for the family of decision trees, leaking only the topology of the tree and the internal node labels. We apply this towards FSS for multi-dimensional intervals. We also present a general technique for extending FSS schemes by increasing the number of parties. * Verifiable FSS. We present efficient protocols for verifying that keys (k*/1,.,k*/m ), obtained from a potentially malicious user, are consistent with some f in F. Such a verification may be critical for applications that involve private writing or voting by many users.