Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Upregulation of miR-146a by YY1 depletion correlates with delayed progression of prostate cancer

Previously published studies explained that the excessive expression of miR-146a influences the prostate cancer (PCa) cells in terms of apoptosis, progression, and viability. Although miR-146a acts as a tumor suppressor, current knowledge on the molecular mechanisms that controls its expression in PCa is limited. In this study, gene set enrichment analysis (GSEA) showed negatively enriched expression of miR-146a target gene sets and positively enriched expression of gene sets suppressed by the enhancer of zeste homolog 2 (EZH2) after YY1 depletion in PCa cells. The current results demonstrated that the miR-146a levels in PCa tissues with high Gleason scores (>7) are significantly lower than those in PCa tissues with low Gleason scores (≤7), which were initially observed in the clinical specimens. An inverse relationship between YY1 and miR-146a expression was also observed. Experiments indicated the decrease in cell viability, proliferation, and promoting apoptosis after YY1 depletion, while through inhibiting miR-146a could alleviate the negative effect brought by YY1 depletion. We detected the reversed adjustment of YY1 to accommodate miR-146a transcriptions. On the basis of YY1 depletion, we determined that the expression of miR-146a increased after EZH2 knockdown. We validated the combination of YY1 and its interaction with EZH2 at the miR-146a promoter binding site, thereby prohibiting the transcriptional activity of miR-146a in PCa cells. Our results suggested that YY1 depletion repressed PCa cell viability and proliferation and induced apoptosis at least in a miR-146a-assisted manner.
Methods for analyzing plant structure at different scales

In the framework of the modelling of plant structure and development, the main focus has been on the design of functional-structural models used in simulation experiments while far less effort has comparatively been devoted to develop dedicated analysis methods. Recent advances in biostatistics and more generally in biological data analysis are characterized by the development of dedicated methods to investigate structured data particularly in molecular biology (DNA and protein sequences, ARN secondary structures .; see Gusfield (1997) and Durbin et al. (1998)) and health sciences (clinical trials . ; see Diggle et al. (2002)). The same kind of approach can be developed for plant structures with a particular emphasis on tree-structured data and embedded sequences. This relies on the assumption that some patterns or regularities cannot be grasped directly from data or with classical analysis methods that apply to unstructured data extracted from plant structures. Hence, our primary objective is to identify regularities not directly apparent in the data with the help of appropriate methods and to deduce biological interpretations from the analysis results. This will be illustrated on contrasted examples corresponding to different scales (branching patterns analysed on growth units described at the node scale, whole plant development analysed at the annual shoot scale) and different types of structured data. These analysis methods, primarily developed to deepen our understanding of plant structure and development, can also be applied to agronomic studies or to the assessment of plant development models (relying on the analysis of simulated data or on the comparison of simulated data with real data). In what concerns the analysed data, our focus will be the scales between the node and the whole plant. Dedicated analysis methods could also be developed for cellular tissues (meristem, wood and leaf cellular structures), shape of trees using for instance methods from statistical shape analysis (Dryden & Mardia, 1998) and set of trees using methods from spatial statistics (Cressie, 1993).
Cost-Benefit of Student Retention Policies and Practices

About the book: This book provides a comprehensive overview of the organizational models of distance and online learning from an international perspective and from the point of view of economic planning, costing and management decision-making. The book points to directions for the further research and development in this area, and will promote further understanding and critical reflection on the part of administrators, practitioners and researchers of distance education. The experiences and perspectives in distance education in the US are balanced with those in other areas of the world.
Using the communication assessment tool in family medicine residency programs.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES The Communication Assessment Tool (CAT), developed by Makoul et al assesses patient perceptions of physicians' interpersonal and communication skills. The objective of this study was to gather initial benchmarking data for the use of the CAT in family medicine residency programs. METHODS Data were collected from patients seeing 127 residents from six family medicine residency programs. A total of 1,931 patients completed the paper and pencil version of the CAT following an appointment with a resident; 1,880 of the CAT forms met the inclusion criteria for analysis. RESULTS The overall mean percentage of items from which residents were rated as excellent was 69.7%. Significant differences were found in the overall percentage of items rated as excellent based on training year, with PGY-1 (77.0%) residents being rated significantly higher than PGY-2 (69.5%) and PGY-3 (68.1%) residents. There were no significant differences found in the overall percentage of items rated as excellent based on the native language or gender of the residents. CONCLUSIONS This initial benchmarking data can allow family medicine residency programs to compare the performance of their residents with the performance of residents from other programs. We recommend that the results of the CAT be used as both an evaluative and learning tool.
Wrapper–Filter Feature Selection Algorithm Using a Memetic Framework

This correspondence presents a novel hybrid wrapper and filter feature selection algorithm for a classification problem using a memetic framework. It incorporates a filter ranking method in the traditional genetic algorithm to improve classification performance and accelerate the search in identifying the core feature subsets. Particularly, the method adds or deletes a feature from a candidate feature subset based on the univariate feature ranking information. This empirical study on commonly used data sets from the University of California, Irvine repository and microarray data sets shows that the proposed method outperforms existing methods in terms of classification accuracy, number of selected features, and computational efficiency. Furthermore, we investigate several major issues of memetic algorithm (MA) to identify a good balance between local search and genetic search so as to maximize search quality and efficiency in the hybrid filter and wrapper MA
Hybrid Singular Value Thresholding for Tensor Completion

In this paper, we study the low-rank tensor completion problem, where a high-order tensor with missing entries is given and the goal is to complete the tensor. We propose to minimize a new convex objective function, based on log sum of exponentials of nuclear norms, that promotes the low-rankness of unfolding matrices of the completed tensor. We show for the first time that the proximal operator to this objective function is readily computable through a hybrid singular value thresholding scheme. This leads to a new solution to high-order (low-rank) tensor completion via convex relaxation. We show that this convex relaxation and the resulting solution are much more effective than existing tensor completion methods (including those also based on minimizing ranks of unfolding matrices). The hybrid singular value thresholding scheme can be applied to any problem where the goal is to minimize the maximum rank of a set of low-rank matrices.
Clinical Profile of Long-Term Survivors and Nonsurvivors With Type 2 Diabetes

OBJECTIVE To compare clinical profile of long-term survivors and nonsurvivors with type 2 diabetes (T2DM). RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS After conducting a retrospective survey of >200,000 case records, we identified T2DM survivors (>40 years of duration) and age at diagnosis and sex-matched T2DM nonsurvivors. Prevalence of complications and causes of death were analyzed. Retinopathy was diagnosed by retinal photography. Microalbuminuria and macroalbuminuria, peripheral vascular disease based on ankle-brachial index <0.9, coronary artery disease based on history of myocardial infarction or coronary revascularization, and neuropathy based on vibration perception threshold >20 V were compared in both groups. RESULTS The mean duration of diabetes of survivors (n = 238) was 43.7 ± 3.9 years, and that of the nonsurvivors (n = 307), at time of death, was 22.4 ± 11.0 years (P < 0.001). Nonsurvivors had significantly higher systolic and diastolic blood pressures, plasma glucose, HbA1c, serum cholesterol, LDL cholesterol, and triglycerides and lower HDL cholesterol compared with long-term survivors (P < 0.001 for all parameters except systolic blood pressure, which was P = 0.027). Myocardial infarction (46.4%) and renal failure (16.6%) were the most common causes of death. Prevalence of most complications was higher among survivors because of longer duration and older age, as follows, for survivors versus nonsurvivors: retinopathy, 76 vs. 62%; microalbuminuria, 39.1 vs. 27.3%; macroalbuminuria, 8.4 vs. 23.7%; neuropathy, 86.5 vs. 63.5%; peripheral vascular disease, 23.1 vs. 11.4%; and coronary artery disease, 44.5 vs. 40.7%. CONCLUSIONS Long-term survivors with T2DM had better glycemic and blood pressure control and more favorable lipid profiles.
Two distinct functional sites of human interleukin 4 are identified by variants impaired in either receptor binding or receptor activation.

Interleukin 4 (IL‐4) exerts a decisive role in the coordination of protective immune responses against parasites, particularly helminths. A disregulation of IL‐4 function is possibly involved in the genesis of allergic disease states. The search for important amino acid residues in human IL‐4 by mutational analysis of charged invariant amino acid positions identified two distinct functional sites in the 4‐helix‐bundle protein. Site 1 was marked by amino acid substitutions of the glutamic acid at position 9 in helix A and arginine at position 88 in helix C. Exchanges at both positions led to IL‐4 variants deficient in binding to the extracellular domain of the IL‐4 receptor (IL‐4R(ex)). In parallel, up to 1000‐fold increased concentrations of this type of variant were required to induce T‐cell proliferation and B‐cell CD23 expression. Site 2 was marked by amino acid exchanges in helix D at positions 121, 124 and 125 (arginine, tyrosine and serine respectively in the wild‐type). IL‐4 variants affected at site 2 exhibited partial agonist activity during T‐cell proliferation; however, they still bound with high affinity to IL‐4R(ex). [The generation of an IL‐4 antagonist by replacing tyrosine 124 with aspartic acid has been described before by Kruse et al. (1992) (EMBO J., 11, 3237‐3244)]. These findings indicate that IL‐4 functions by binding IL‐4R(ex) via site 1 which is constituted by residues on helices A and C. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Facial mimicry is not necessary to recognize emotion: Facial expression recognition by people with Moebius syndrome

Abstract According to the reverse simulation model of embodied simulation theory, we recognize others' emotions by subtly mimicking their expressions, which allows us to feel the corresponding emotion through facial feedback. Previous studies examining whether facial mimicry is necessary for facial expression recognition were limited by potentially distracting manipulations intended to artificially restrict facial mimicry or very small samples of people with facial paralysis. We addressed these limitations by collecting the largest sample to date of people with Moebius syndrome, a condition characterized by congenital bilateral facial paralysis. In this Internet-based study, 37 adults with Moebius syndrome and 37 matched control participants completed a facial expression recognition task. People with Moebius syndrome did not differ from the control group or normative data in emotion recognition accuracy, and accuracy was not related to extent of ability to produce facial expressions. Our results do not support the hypothesis that reverse simulation with facial mimicry is necessary for facial expression recognition.
Fund raisers : their careers, stories, concerns, and accomplishments

Foreword 1. Challenges and Opportunities in Fund Raising 2. Who Are America's Fund Raisers? 3. Fund Raising Career Patterns 4. Attitudes, Motivations, and Career Decisions 5. Compensation Issues 6. Learning About Fund Raising and Improving Practice 7. What Are the Best Fund Raisers Like? 8. Key Issues in Fund Raising 9. Building on Fund Raising Research
The endogeneity of the natural rate of growth

The aim of this paper is to estimate the sensitivity of the natural rate of growth to the actual rate of growth for 15 OECD countries over the period 1961--95, on the hypothesis that the natural rate of growth is not exogenously given. To do this, we estimate the natural rate of growth and, then, how it changes when the actual growth rate is different from the natural rate. As a side test of the endogeneity hypothesis, we also test for the direction of causality between national output and factor inputs for the same set of countries. Our results support the idea that the natural rate of growth is not independent of the actual rate of growth and bring to the fore the importance of focusing on demand as well as supply for an understanding of long-run growthrate differences between countries. Copyright 2002, Oxford University Press.
Bioinformatics approaches to large scale genome comparison, including the identification of conserved noncoding regions

The repeatitive pattern of genomic DNA reveals much about the structure and organization of genomes. REPuter is a bioinformatics tool that efficiently finds repeatitive substrings in large genomic sequences. The identification of repeats enables a wide range of biological interpretations. Here we describe how this single software is applied to many different biological problems: assembly check, localization of low copy repeats, identification of string uniqueness, matching cDNAs onto genomic sequences, and comparison of gene structure. The adaptation of REPuter to the era of comparative genomics is described considering its biologically meaningful improvements, generating the new visualization GenAlyzer. The ability to compare different genomes enables researchers to look for conservation and functionality of regulatory regions. Considering that sequences containing vital information are under greater evolutionary pressure than sequences without function, the former are expected to be more conserved during evolution. This clearly holds for protein coding sequences and can also be exploited in the study of regulatory or other noncoding functional sequences. Using comparative genomics, these noncoding functional sequences can be identified as conserved noncoding sequences (CNSs). Today, the functionality of CNSs is determined by very elaborate and time consuming experimental methods. Depending on the background level of similarity between the organisms being compared, the amount of conserved noncoding sequences can be very large and almost impracticable to handle in the wet-lab. Making use of available tools for genome annotation and comparison, we have developed Connosseur, a Conserved Noncoding Sequences Repository Generator. It provides bioinformatics support for generating and screening the set of CNSs between two genomic sequences. Connosseur automates several tools in a computational cascade, finally returning a repository of CNSs and associated information. For the data storage, we used the relational database system PostgreSQL. Further analyses can be carried out upon selected pCNSs. This includes determining uniqueness, overrepresented words analysis and comparison to known functional CNSs. This approach allowed us to identify several potential CNSs between mouse and human genomic sequences. Overall, Connosseur provides a flexible and extensible basis for in-depth studies of pCNSs.
India’s Look East Policy

The Look East policy has emerged as an important foreign policy initiative of India in the post-Cold War period. It was launched in 1991 by the Narasimha Rao government with the aim of developing political contacts, increasing economic integration and forging security cooperation with countries of Southeast Asia. The policy marked a shift in India’s perspective of the world, with the strategic and economic importance of Southeast Asia to India’s national interests being recognised. The second phase, which began in 2003, extends the coverage of the Look East policy from Australia to East Asia, with Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) as its core. The new phase thus marks a shift in focus from trade to wider economic and security cooperation, political partnerships, physical connectivity through road and rail links. In this article, the evolution of India’s Look East policy and its recent approach are analysed.
Biphasic Ca2+ dependence of inositol 1,4,5-trisphosphate-induced Ca release in smooth muscle cells of the guinea pig taenia caeci

Ca2+ dependence of the inositol 1,4,5-trisphosphate (IP3)-induced Ca release was studied in saponin-skinned smooth muscle fiber bundles of the guinea pig taenia caeci at 20-22 degrees C. Ca release from the skinned fiber bundles was monitored by microfluorometry of fura-2. Fiber bundles were first treated with 30 microM ryanodine for 120 s in the presence of 45 mM caffeine to lock open the Ca-induced Ca release channels which are present in approximately 40% of the Ca store of the smooth muscle cells of the taenia. The Ca store with the Ca-induced Ca release mechanism was functionally removed by this treatment, but the rest of the store, which was devoid of the ryanodine-sensitive Ca release mechanism, remained intact. The Ca2+ dependence of the IP3- induced Ca release mechanism was, therefore, studied independently of the Ca-induced Ca release. The rate of IP3-induced Ca release was enhanced by Ca2+ between 0 and 300 nM, but further increase in the Ca2+ concentration also exerted an inhibitory effect. Thus, the rate of IP3- induced Ca release was about the same in the absence of Ca2+ and at 3 microM Ca2+, and was about six times faster at 300 nM Ca2+. Hydrolysis of IP3 within the skinned fiber bundles was not responsible for these effects, because essentially the same effects were observed with or without Mg2+, an absolute requirement of the IP3 phosphatase activity. Ca2+, therefore, is likely to affect the gating mechanism and/or affinity for the ligand of the IP3-induced Ca release mechanism. The biphasic effect of Ca2+ on the IP3-induced Ca release is expected to form a positive feedback loop in the IP3-induced Ca mobilization below 300 nM Ca2+, and a negative feedback loop above 300 nM Ca2+.
Competence exploration and exploitation in new product development

Purpose – This paper aims to extend research on exploration and exploitation by investigating the effects of competence exploration and exploitation on new product development outcomes in China. Premised from the perspective of environment‐performance relationship and the fit‐as‐moderation view, the authors argue that exploration and exploitation have curvilinear effects on new product development performance due to external environmental factors.Design/methodology/approach – The paper is based on a questionnaire survey/analysis of a sample of 289 firms in China.Findings – Consistent with the two perspectives mentioned above, the curvilinear link between competence exploration and new product performance was negatively moderated by environmental dynamism but positively moderated by environmental competitiveness. In contrast, the non‐linear effect of competence exploitation on new product performance was positively moderated by environmental dynamism but negatively moderated by environmental competitivenes.
The Genetic and Environmental Contributions to Internet Use and Associations With Psychopathology: A Twin Study

Excessive internet use has been linked to psychopathology. Therefore, understanding the genetic and environmental risks underpinning internet use and their relation to psychopathology is important. This study aims to explore the genetic and environmental etiology of internet use measures and their associations with internalizing disorders and substance use disorders. The sample included 2,059 monozygotic (MZ) and dizygotic (DZ) young adult twins from the Brisbane Longitudinal Twin Study (BLTS). Younger participants reported more frequent internet use, while women were more likely to use the internet for interpersonal communication. Familial aggregation in ‘frequency of internet use’ was entirely explained by additive genetic factors accounting for 41% of the variance. Familial aggregation in ‘frequency of use after 11 pm’, ‘using the internet to contact peers’, and ‘using the internet primarily to access social networking sites’ was attributable to varying combinations of additive genetic and shared environmental factors. In terms of psychopathology, there were no significant associations between internet use measures and major depression (MD), but there were positive significant associations between ‘frequency of internet use’ and ‘frequency of use after 11 pm’ with social phobia (SP). ‘Using the internet to contact peers’ was positively associated with alcohol abuse, whereas ‘using the internet to contact peers’ and ‘using the internet primarily to access social networking sites’ were negatively associated with cannabis use disorders and nicotine symptoms. Individual differences in internet use can be attributable to varying degrees of genetic and environmental risks. Despite some significant associations of small effect, variation in internet use appears mostly unrelated to psychopathology.
A Low-Cost Side Channel Traffic Analysis Attack in Packet Networks

This paper presents a nefarious low-cost traffic analysis attack in packet-based networks, such as the Internet. The attack is mountable in any scenario where a shared routing resource exists among users. A real-world attack successfully compromised the privacy of a user without requiring significant resources in terms of access, memory, or computational power. The effectiveness of our attack is demonstrated in a scenario where the user’s DSL router uses FCFS scheduling policy. Specifically, we show that by using a low-rate string of pings, a remote attacker can obtain significant traffic-timing and volume information about a particular user, just by observing the round trip time of the pings. We also observe that even when the scheduling policy is changed to round-robin, while the correlation reduces significantly, the attacker can still reliably deduce user’s traffic pattern. Most of the router scheduling policies designed to date are evaluated mostly on the metrics of throughput, delay and fairness. Our work is aimed to demonstrate a need for considering an additional metric of performance, the anonymity between the individual traffic flows through the router.