Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
MicroRNA-21 Affects Proliferation and Apoptosis by Regulating Expression of PTEN in Human Keloid Fibroblasts

Background: MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are small noncoding RNA molecules that regulate gene expression in the progress of proliferation, differentiation, and apoptosis. A keloid is considered to be a type of benign tumor. The exact contribution of miRNAs in keloid fibroblasts remains largely unknown. Methods: Loss and gain of function was used by transfecting the keloid fibroblast cells with chemically synthesized oligonucleotides complementary to microRNA-21 (miR-21). Expression of phosphatase and tensin homolog deleted on chromosome 10 (PTEN) in keloid tissues and adjacent normal skin tissues were investigated by quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction and Western blot assay. Moreover, cell apoptosis and proliferation were checked in keloid cells, and related proteins were determined by Western blot assay. Results: MiR-21 inhibitor and mimic transfection changed the apoptosis and DNA synthesis. Of the 23 paired samples analyzed, expression of PTEN was low in keloid tissues relative to adjacent normal skin tissues. Cells showed an inverse correlation between miR-21 and PTEN protein after transfection. In addition, cell proliferation was increased when normal skin fibroblasts were transfected with miR-21 mimics. It is worth noting that the expression of phosphorylated AKT decreased to relatively low levels after miR-21 inhibitor treatment. Conclusions: This in vitro study demonstrates important interactions among miR-21 expression, keloid fibroblast apoptosis, cell proliferation, and some related proteins. These findings may provide some hints toward effective applications of miR-21 as a therapy target for keloids.
Neural Network-Based Coronary Heart Disease Risk Prediction Using Feature Correlation Analysis

Background Of the machine learning techniques used in predicting coronary heart disease (CHD), neural network (NN) is popularly used to improve performance accuracy. Objective Even though NN-based systems provide meaningful results based on clinical experiments, medical experts are not satisfied with their predictive performances because NN is trained in a “black-box” style. Method We sought to devise an NN-based prediction of CHD risk using feature correlation analysis (NN-FCA) using two stages. First, the feature selection stage, which makes features acceding to the importance in predicting CHD risk, is ranked, and second, the feature correlation analysis stage, during which one learns about the existence of correlations between feature relations and the data of each NN predictor output, is determined. Result Of the 4146 individuals in the Korean dataset evaluated, 3031 had low CHD risk and 1115 had CHD high risk. The area under the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve of the proposed model (0.749 ± 0.010) was larger than the Framingham risk score (FRS) (0.393 ± 0.010). Conclusions The proposed NN-FCA, which utilizes feature correlation analysis, was found to be better than FRS in terms of CHD risk prediction. Furthermore, the proposed model resulted in a larger ROC curve and more accurate predictions of CHD risk in the Korean population than the FRS.
Infrared spectroscopy of a brown dwarf companion candidate near the young star GSC 08047-00232 in Horologium

We present infrared H -a ndK-band spectra of a companion candidate 3 �� north of the young star GSC 08047-00232, a probable member of the nearby young Horologium association. From previously obtained JHK-band colors and the magnitude difference between primary and companion candidate, the latter could well be substellar (Neuhauser et al. 2000) with the spectral type being roughly M 7−L 9 from the JHK colors (Chauvin et al. 2003). With the H -a ndK-band spectra now obtained with ISAAC at the VLT, the spectral type of the companion candidate is found to be M 6−9.5. Assuming the same age and distance as for the primary star (∼35 Myr, 50 to 85 pc), this yields a mass of ∼25 Jupiter masses for the companion, hence indeed substellar. After TWA-5 B and HR 7329 B, this is the third brown dwarf companion around a nearby (≤100 pc) young (≤100 Myr) star. A total of three confirmed brown dwarf companions (any mass, separation ≥50 AU) around 79 stars surveyed in three young nearby associations corresponds to a frequency of 6 ± 4% (with a correction for missing companions which are almost on the same line-of-sight as the primary star instead of being separated well), consistent with the expectation, if binaries have the same mass function as field stars. Hence, it seems that there is no brown dwarf desert at wide separations.
Visuomotor impairments in older adults at increased Alzheimer's disease risk.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE Recent evidence suggests that visuomotor behaviors may be disrupted in the very early stages of Alzheimer's disease (AD). Here we propose that using kinematic measures under conditions that place demands on visual-spatial and cognitive-motor processing may provide an effective behavioral means to detect subtle changes associated with AD risk. METHODS To this end, we have tested 22 young adults (mean age = 26.4 ± 4.1) and 22 older adults (mean age = 64.3 ± 10.1) at low AD, and 22 older adults (mean age = 67.7 ± 11.3) at high AD risk (i.e., strong family history or diagnosis of mild cognitive impairment). Kinematic measures were acquired on four visuomotor transformation tasks (standard, feedback reversal, plane dissociated, and plane dissociated + feedback reversal) using a dual-touchscreen tablet. RESULTS Comparing participants at increased AD risk with both young and old healthy control groups revealed significant performance disruptions in at-risk individuals as task demands increased. Furthermore, we were able to discriminate between individuals at high and low AD risk with a classification accuracy of 86.4% (sensitivity: 81.8%, specificity: 90.9%). CONCLUSION We suggest that the impairments observed in individuals at increased AD risk may reflect inherent brain alteration and/or early neuropathology disrupting the reciprocal communication between hippocampal, parietal, and frontal brain regions required to successfully prepare and update complex reaching movements. Such impairment has the potential to affect activities of daily living, and may serve as a sensitive measure of functional ability in at-risk adults.
Phrase-based Machine Translation is State-of-the-Art for Automatic Grammatical Error Correction

In this work, we study parameter tuning towards the M^2 metric, the standard metric for automatic grammar error correction (GEC) tasks. After implementing M^2 as a scorer in the Moses tuning framework, we investigate interactions of dense and sparse features, different optimizers, and tuning strategies for the CoNLL-2014 shared task. We notice erratic behavior when optimizing sparse feature weights with M^2 and offer partial solutions. We find that a bare-bones phrase-based SMT setup with task-specific parameter-tuning outperforms all previously published results for the CoNLL-2014 test set by a large margin (46.37% M^2 over previously 41.75%, by an SMT system with neural features) while being trained on the same, publicly available data. Our newly introduced dense and sparse features widen that gap, and we improve the state-of-the-art to 49.49% M^2.
Using Distributional Statistics to Acquire Morphophonological Alternations: Evidence from Production and Perception

Morphophonological alternations, such as the voicing alternation that arises in a morphological paradigm due to final-devoicing in Dutch, are notoriously difficult for children to acquire. This has previously been attributed to their unpredictability. In fact, the presence or absence of a voicing alternation is partly predictable if the phonological context of the word is taken into account, and adults have been shown to use this information (Ernestus and Baayen, 2003). This study investigates whether voicing alternations are predictable from the child’s input, and whether children can make use of this information. A corpus study of child-directed speech establishes that the likelihood of a stem-final obstruent alternating is somewhat predictable on the basis of the phonological properties of the stem. In Experiment 1 Dutch 3-year-olds’ production accuracy in a plural-elicitation task is shown to be sensitive to the distributional statistics. However, distributional properties do not play a role in children’s sensitivity to mispronunciations of voicing in a Preferential Looking Task in Experiment 2.
Effect of a community intervention programme promoting social interactions on functional disability prevention for older adults: propensity score matching and instrumental variable analyses, JAGES Taketoyo study

Background The efficacy of promoting social interactions to improve the health of older adults is not fully established due to residual confounding and selection bias. Methods The government of Taketoyo town, Aichi Prefecture, Japan, developed a resident-centred community intervention programme called ‘community salons’, providing opportunities for social interactions among local older residents. To evaluate the impact of the programme, we conducted questionnaire surveys for all older residents of Taketoyo. We carried out a baseline survey in July 2006 (prior to the introduction of the programme) and assessed the onset of functional disability during March 2012. We analysed the data of 2421 older people. In addition to the standard Cox proportional hazard regression, we conducted Cox regression with propensity score matching (PSM) and an instrumental variable (IV) analysis, using the number of community salons within a radius of 350 m from the participant's home as an instrument. Results In the 5 years after the first salon was launched, the salon participants showed a 6.3% lower incidence of functional disability compared with non-participants. Even adjusting for sex, age, equivalent income, educational attainment, higher level activities of daily living and depression, the Cox adjusted HR for becoming disabled was 0.49 (95% CI 0.33 to 0.72). Similar results were observed using PSM (HR 0.52, 95% CI 0.33 to 0.83) and IV-Cox analysis (HR 0.50, 95% CI 0.34 to 0.74). Conclusions A community health promotion programme focused on increasing social interactions among older adults may be effective in preventing the onset of disability.
Comparison Results for GARCH Processes

We consider the problem of stochastic comparison of general GARCH-like processes for different parameters and different distributions of the innovations. We identify several stochastic orders that are propagated from the innovations to the GARCH process itself, and we discuss their interpretations. We focus on the convex order and show that in the case of symmetric innovations it is also propagated to the cumulated sums of the GARCH process. More generally, we discuss multivariate comparison results related to the multivariate convex and supermodular orders. Finally, we discuss ordering with respect to the parameters in the GARCH(1, 1) case.
Repurposing lipoic acid changes electron flow in two important metabolic pathways of Escherichia coli

In bacteria, cysteines of cytoplasmic proteins, including the essential enzyme ribonucleotide reductase (RNR), are maintained in the reduced state by the thioredoxin and glutathione/glutaredoxin pathways. An Escherichia coli mutant lacking both glutathione reductase and thioredoxin reductase cannot grow because RNR is disulfide bonded and nonfunctional. Here we report that suppressor mutations in the lpdA gene, which encodes the oxidative enzyme lipoamide dehydrogenase required for tricarboxylic acid (TCA) cycle functioning, restore growth to this redox-defective mutant. The suppressor mutations reduce LpdA activity, causing the accumulation of dihydrolipoamide, the reduced protein-bound form of lipoic acid. Dihydrolipoamide can then provide electrons for the reactivation of RNR through reduction of glutaredoxins. Dihydrolipoamide is oxidized in the process, restoring function to the TCA cycle. Thus, two electron transfer pathways are rewired to meet both oxidative and reductive needs of the cell: dihydrolipoamide functionally replaces glutathione, and the glutaredoxins replace LpdA. Both lipoic acid and glutaredoxins act in the reverse manner from their normal cellular functions. Bioinformatic analysis suggests that such activities may also function in other bacteria.
Should Market Liberalization Precede Democracy? Causal Relations between Political Preferences and Development

This paper is dedicated to the relation between market development and democracy. We distinguish contexts and preferences and ask whether it is true that the demand for democracy only emerges after a certain degree of market development is reached, and whether, conversely, democratization is likely to be an obstacle to the acceptation of market liberalization. Our study hinges on a new survey rich in attitudinal variables: the Life in Transition Survey (LITS) conducted in 2006 by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the World Bank, in 28 post-Transition countries. Our identification strategy consists in relying on the specific situation of frontier-zones. We find that democracy enhances the support for market development whereas the reverse is not true. Hence, the relativist argument according to which the preference for democracy is an endogenous by-product of market development is not supported by our data.
Predictive Value of Object Relations for Therapeutic Alliance and Outcome in Psychotherapy for Depression: An Exploratory Study

The concept of object relations has been shown to be relevant for the process and outcome of psychodynamic psychotherapies. However, little is known about its relevance for the psychotherapeutic treatment of depression. In this study, we explored the predictive value of object relational functioning (ORF) for the therapeutic alliance and outcome of short-term psychodynamic supportive psychotherapy in patients with mild to moderately severe depression. The ORF of 81 patients was rated by using the Developmental Profile. The overall maturity of ORF measured at baseline was higher in patients who showed a better treatment response. In multiple regression analysis, the adaptive level of individuation appeared to be specifically predictive of outcome. Patients with a recurrent depression showed less mature levels of ORF, lower adaptive levels and a higher score on the symbiotic level. No association was found between ORF and therapeutic alliance during treatment. In contrast to the single measure of alliance early in therapy, the growth of the alliance was related to outcome. The study indicated the relevance of ORF for depression and established that it is distinctive from the actual therapeutic alliance.
THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN MONETARY AGGREGATES, INFLATION AND OUTPUT IN FIJI

This paper examines the relationship between selected monetary aggregates and inflation and output. Simple correlation coefficients and Granger causality tests under a VAR framework were used to discover the leading or lagging role of the monetary aggregates. In addition, the information provided by the monetary aggregates as predictors of output and inflation was examined. This was assessed by examining their predictive power for subsequent observations on an in-sample basis. Overall, the results indicated a lack of robustness in the relationship between the monetary aggregates and the economic activity variables, as well as in their predictive power.
An embodied approach to language comprehension in probable Alzheimer's Disease : could perceptuo-motor processing be a key to better understanding?

One of the central tenets of the embodied theory of language comprehension is that the process of understanding prompts the same perceptuo-motor activity involved in actual perception and action. This activity is a component of comprehension that is not memory–dependent and is hypothesized to be intact in Alzheimer’s Disease (AD). Each article in this thesis is aimed at answering the question whether individuals with probable AD, healthy older adults and younger adults show differences in their performance on tests where perceptual and motoric priming take place during language comprehension. The second question each article asks is whether language comprehension in AD can be facilitated by the specific use of this perceptual and motoric priming. Article I examines whether the way individuals with pAD represent verbs spatially matches the way healthy older and younger adults do, and how stable these representations are. It also explores in what way spatial representations may relate to verb comprehension, more specifically, whether representations matching the norms translate into a better quality of verb comprehension. Article II tests the interaction between the verbs’ spatial representations taking place during comprehension and perceptual cues - compatible and incompatible to the representations - in order to investigate whether individuals with pAD show differences in susceptibility to perceptual cues, compared to healthy older and younger participants. The second aim of this article is to explore in what way performance on a word-picture verification task can be affected, with reference to the fact that in previous studies on young participants, both priming and interference have resulted from the interaction of linguistic and perceptual processing. Article III explores the Action Compatibility Effect (ACE) (Glenberg & Kaschak, 2002) with the aim of finding out whether the ACE exists for volunteers with pAD and whether it can facilitate language comprehension. The order of presentation of language and movement is manipulated to establish whether there is a reciprocal relationship between them. This information could be crucial in view of possible applications to individuals with pAD. These articles test, for the first time, the effects of the manipulation of the perceptuo-motor component during language comprehension in individuals with pAD; they are intended as a methodological exploration contributing to a better understanding of the potential of embodiment principles to support language comprehension changes associated with pAD. Embodiment effects need to be studied further with a view to putting them to use in either clinical or real-life applications.
Characterization of Antigens from the Yeast Phase of Histoplasma capsulatum

Preliminary studies established methods for obtaining maximum yields of viable cells. Liquid shaken cultures of Histoplasma capsulatum provided a maximum of 4 × 108 to 5 × 108 cells/ml regardless of the inoculum size. Under optimum conditions, cells were viable (90 to 95%) for 168 to 240 hr. Generation times ranged from 7.52 to 8.36 hr. Immunodiffusion, immunoelectrophoresis, and ultracentrifugation studies on phenol and ethylenediamine extracts of intact cells and cell walls revealed the presence of two components in the ethylenediamine extracts and three in the phenol preparations. The ethylenediamine extracts from intact cells and cell walls seemed to be identical although one of the components was more abundant in cell walls. Mice injected intraperitoneally with intact cells or cell walls were protected against intravenous challenge with H. capsulatum. Among the extracts, the water-soluble ethylenediamine extract from cell walls was most immunogenic. The other extracts gave only a light protection or none at all. Intact cells and cell walls were slightly toxic to mice. Two of the extracts were toxic when incorporated into Freund's complete adjuvant.
Pacemaker-neuron–dependent disturbance of the molecular clockwork by a Drosophila CLOCK mutant homologous to the mouse Clock mutation

Significance The circadian clock drives ∼24-hour rhythms in behavior and physiology of organisms, and is dependent on transcriptional/translational feedback loops (TTFLs) at the cellular level. Pacemaker neurons in the brain control specific circadian behaviors in response to environmental timing cues such as light and temperature cycles. We show here that flies expressing dCLOCK (dCLK) lacking amino acids 657–707, homologous to the mouse Clock mutation, display pacemaker-neuron–dependent disturbance of the molecular clockwork. Specifically, the molecular rhythms in light-sensitive pacemaker neurons were significantly disrupted, but the molecular rhythms in temperature-sensitive pacemaker neurons were robust. Our results suggest that the dCLK-controlled TTFL operates differently in subsets of pacemaker neurons, which contributes to their specific functions, such as differential sensitivity to entraining cues. Circadian clocks are composed of transcriptional/translational feedback loops (TTFLs) at the cellular level. In Drosophila TTFLs, the transcription factor dCLOCK (dCLK)/CYCLE (CYC) activates clock target gene expression, which is repressed by the physical interaction with PERIOD (PER). Here, we show that amino acids (AA) 657–707 of dCLK, a region that is homologous to the mouse Clock exon 19-encoded region, is crucial for PER binding and E-box–dependent transactivation in S2 cells. Consistently, in transgenic flies expressing dCLK with an AA657–707 deletion in the Clock (Clkout) genetic background (p{dClk-Δ};Clkout), oscillation of core clock genes’ mRNAs displayed diminished amplitude compared with control flies, and the highly abundant dCLKΔ657–707 showed significantly decreased binding to PER. Behaviorally, the p{dClk-Δ};Clkout flies exhibited arrhythmic locomotor behavior in the photic entrainment condition but showed anticipatory activities of temperature transition and improved free-running rhythms in the temperature entrainment condition. Surprisingly, p{dClk-Δ};Clkout flies showed pacemaker-neuron–dependent alterations in molecular rhythms; the abundance of dCLK target clock proteins was reduced in ventral lateral neurons (LNvs) but not in dorsal neurons (DNs) in both entrainment conditions. In p{dClk-Δ};Clkout flies, however, strong but delayed molecular oscillations in temperature cycle-sensitive pacemaker neurons, such as DN1s and DN2s, were correlated with delayed anticipatory activities of temperature transition. Taken together, our study reveals that the LNv molecular clockwork is more sensitive than the clockwork of DNs to dysregulation of dCLK by AA657–707 deletion. Therefore, we propose that the dCLK/CYC-controlled TTFL operates differently in subsets of pacemaker neurons, which may contribute to their specific functions.
State and Parameter Estimation for Canonic Models of Neural oscillators

We consider the problem of how to recover the state and parameter values of typical model neurons, such as Hindmarsh-Rose, FitzHugh-Nagumo, Morris-Lecar, from in-vitro measurements of membrane potentials. In control theory, in terms of observer design, model neurons qualify as locally observable. However, unlike most models traditionally addressed in control theory, no parameter-independent diffeomorphism exists, such that the original model equations can be transformed into adaptive canonic observer form. For a large class of model neurons, however, state and parameter reconstruction is possible nevertheless. We propose a method which, subject to mild conditions on the richness of the measured signal, allows model parameters and state variables to be reconstructed up to an equivalence class.