Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Scube3 Is Expressed in Multiple Tissues during Development but Is Dispensable for Embryonic Survival in the Mouse

The vertebrate Scube family consists of three independent members Scube1-3; which encode secreted cell surface-associated membrane glycoproteins that share a domain organization of at least five recognizable motifs and the ability to both homo- and heterodimerize. There is recent biochemical evidence to suggest that Scube2 is directly involved in Hedgehog signaling, acting co-operatively with Dispatched to mediate the release in soluble form of cholesterol and palmitate-modified Hedgehog ligand during long-range activity. Indeed, in the zebrafish myotome, all three Scube proteins can subtly promote Hedgehog signal transduction in a non-cell autonomous manner. In order to further investigate the role of Scube genes during development, we have generated mice with targeted inactivation of Scube3. Despite a dynamic developmental expression pattern, with transcripts present in neuroectoderm, endoderm and endochondral tissues, particularly within the craniofacial region; an absence of Scube3 function results in no overt embryonic phenotype in the mouse. Mutant mice are born at expected Mendelian ratios, are both viable and fertile, and seemingly retain normal Hedgehog signaling activity in craniofacial tissues. These findings suggest that in the mouse, Scube3 is dispensable for normal development; however, they do not exclude the possibility of a co-operative role for Scube3 with other Scube members during embryogenesis or a potential role in adult tissue homeostasis over the long-term.
Important molecular genetic markers of colorectal cancer

Colorectal cancer (CRC) ranks third in the incidences of cancer morbidity and mortality worldwide. CRC is rather heterogeneous with regard to molecular genetic characteristics and pathogenic pathways. A wide spectrum of biomarkers is used for molecular subtype determination, prognosis, and estimation of sensitivity to different drugs in practice. These biomarkers can include germline and somatic mutations, chromosomal aberrations, genomic abnormalities, gene expression alterations at mRNA or protein level and changes in DNA methylation status. In the present review we discuss the most important and well-studied CRC biomarkers, and their potential clinical significance and current approaches to molecular classification of colorectal tumors.
Numerical simulations of the Lyman α forest – a comparison of gadget-2 and enzo

We compare simulations of the Lyman a forest performed with two different hydrodynamical codes, GADGET-2 and ENZO. A comparison of the dark matter power spectrum for simulations run with identical initial conditions show differences of 1-3 per cent at the scales relevant for quantitative studies of the Lyman a forest. This allows a meaningful comparison of the effect of the different implementations of the hydrodynamic part of the two codes. Using the same cooling and heating algorithm in both codes, the differences in the temperature and the density probability distribution function are of the order of 10 per cent. The differences are comparable to the effects of box size and resolution on these statistics. When self-converged results for each code are taken into account, the differences in the flux power spectrum - the statistics most widely used for estimating the matter power spectrum and cosmological parameters from Lyman a forest data - are about 5 per cent. This is again comparable to the effects of box size and resolution. Numerical uncertainties due to a particular implementation of solving the hydrodynamic or gravitational equations appear therefore to contribute only moderately to the error budget in estimates of the flux power spectrum from numerical simulations. We further find that the differences in the flux power spectrum for ENZO simulations run with and without adaptive mesh refinement are also of the order of 5 per cent or smaller. The latter require 10 times less CPU time making the CPU time requirement similar to that of a version of GADGET-2 that is optimized for Lyman a forest simulations.
A seamless Web integration of adaptive HTTP streaming

Nowadays video is an important part of the Web and Web sites like YouTube, Hulu, etc. count millions of users consuming their content every day. However, these Web sites mainly use media players based on proprietary browser plug-ins (i.e., Adobe Flash) and do not leverage adaptive streaming systems. This paper presents a seamless integration of the recent MPEG standard on Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP (DASH) in the Web using the HTML5 video element. Therefore, we present DASH-JS, a JavaScript-based MPEG-DASH client which adopts the Media Source API of Google's Chrome browser to present a flexible and potentially browser independent DASH client. Furthermore, we present the integration of WebM based media segments in DASH giving a detailed description of the used container format structure and a corresponding Media Presentation Description (MPD). Our preliminary evaluation demonstrates the bandwidth adaption capabilities to show the effectiveness of the system.
Sexual Consent In and Out of the Bedroom: Disjunctive Views of Heterosexual College Students

Abstract Previous research assumes that people communicate consent “in the bedroom” or other private settings and immediately prior to sexual activity. The research presented in this study challenges that notion, examining consent as it was interpreted by 30 heterosexual college students during in-depth interviews. Our findings suggest that men often read consent as happening in social settings, whereas women are more likely to conceptualize such cues as part of a larger consent process that also includes cues occurring in private settings. This disjunctive understanding may be a function of larger social scripts regarding expected sexual behavior and may lead to problematic interpretations of consent messages.
Morphological study on kenaf (Hibiscus cannabinus) fibres after treated with hydrothermal treatment

This study shows the effect on the morphological structures and surfaces of kenaf fibres after being treated with hydrothermal treatments at three different temperatures using laboratory autoclave. Kenaf fibres were treated using hydrothermal treatments for 30 minutes. The morphology of the kenaf fibres after and before the hydrothermal treatments reveals the true conditions of the kenaf fibres. To investigate the conditions of the fibres in ultrastructure level Field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM) was used. Severe condition can be seen on the kenaf fibres with the cracks and damages on the kenaf structures after the treatment when compared with untreated.
S3D: Scalable Pedestrian Detection via Score Scale Surface Discrimination

Pedestrian detection has remained an important research topic in both the computer vision and multimedia communities because of its importance in practical applications, such as driving assistance and video surveillance. Existing methods compare the response score with a fixed threshold to determine whether a candidate region contains pedestrians and produce dissatisfactory results that contain either missed detections or false detections, which are difficult to balance. This situation has a serious impact under the condition of variable scale. This paper investigates the functional relationship between the scores and scales of pedestrians. By designing experiments with multiple scales, we have found a discriminant surface in the score scale space. Pedestrians can be distinguished at various scale levels according to their locations on the discriminant surface. The proposed approach is evaluated using four challenging pedestrian detection datasets, including Caltech, INRIA, ETH, and KITTI, and the superior experimental results are achieved when compared with baseline methods.
First insight into the current prevalence of bovine tuberculosis in cattle slaughtered in Cameroon: the case of main abattoirs of Yaoundé and Douala.

Aim: The aim of this study was to evaluate the current prevalence of bovine tuberculosis at Yaounde and Douala abattoirs. Study Design: Many investigations confirmed that bovine tuberculosis is prevalent in cattle destined for consumption in Cameroon but the magnitude and the distribution of animal tuberculosis in the country are unknown. Place and Duration of Study: Sampling was made during routine meat inspection, in the Yaounde and Douala abattoirs located in the Central and Littoral regions of Cameroon respectively. Sampling was successively carried out from November 2010 to April 2011. Sample processing (culture, acid-fast staining and spoligotyping) was made at
Indoxyl sulphate induces oxidative stress and the expression of osteoblast-specific proteins in vascular smooth muscle cells.

BACKGROUND Previously, we demonstrated that indoxyl sulphate (IS), a uraemic toxin, induced aortic calcification in hypertensive rats. This study aimed to determine if IS induces the production of reactive oxygen species (ROS) and the expression of osteoblast-specific proteins in human aortic smooth muscle cells (HASMCs). METHODS In order to achieve these goals, HASMCs were incubated with IS. ROS were detected using probes with a fluorescence detector. The expression of alkaline phosphatase (ALP), osteopontin and organic anion transporters (OAT1, OAT3) was studied by western blotting. The expression of core binding factor 1 (Cbfa1), ALP, osteopontin and NADPH oxidases (Nox1, Nox2 and Nox4) was analysed by reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR). Knockdown of Nox4 was performed by RNA interference (RNAi). RESULTS IS induced ROS generation and the expression of Nox4, Cbfa1, ALP and osteopontin in HASMCs. A NADPH oxidase inhibitor and antioxidants inhibited IS-induced ROS production and mRNA expression of Cbfa1 and ALP. Knockdown of Nox4 using small interfering RNA (siRNA) inhibited IS-induced ROS production and mRNA expression of Cbfa1, ALP and osteopontin. OAT3 was expressed in HASMCs. CONCLUSIONS IS induces ROS generation by upregulating Nox4, and the expression of osteoblast-specific proteins such as Cbfa1, ALP and osteopontin in HASMCs.
Enabling applications in sensor-based pervasive environments

Supporting new emerging applications in broadband sensor-based pervasive environments requires a programming and management paradigm where the behaviors as well as the interactions of application elements (sensors, actuators, services, etc.) are dynamic, opportunistic, and context, content and capability aware. In this paper we present a programming model that enables opportunistic application flows in pervasive environments. The model builds on content-based discovery and routing services and defines associative rendezvous (AR) as an abstraction for content-based decoupled interactions. Cascading local behaviors (CLB) then build on associative rendezvous to enable opportunistic application flows to emerge as a result of context and content based local behaviors. In this paper we also present the design, prototype implementation and experimental evaluation of the Meteor programming framework and content-based middleware.
Rich Dynamics of a Hepatitis B Viral Infection Model with Logistic Hepatocyte Growth

Chronic hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection is a major cause of human suffering, and a number of mathematical models have examined within-host dynamics of the disease. Most previous HBV infection models have assumed that: (a) hepatocytes regenerate at a constant rate from a source outside the liver; and/or (b) the infection takes place via a mass action process. Assumption (a) contradicts experimental data showing that healthy hepatocytes proliferate at a rate that depends on current liver size relative to some equilibrium mass, while assumption (b) produces a problematic basic reproduction number. Here we replace the constant infusion of healthy hepatocytes with a logistic growth term and the mass action infection term by a standard incidence function; these modifications enrich the dynamics of a well-studied model of HBV pathogenesis. In particular, in addition to disease free and endemic steady states, the system also allows a stable periodic orbit and a steady state at the origin. Since the system is not differentiable at the origin, we use a ratio-dependent transformation to show that there is a region in parameter space where the origin is globally stable. When the basic reproduction number, R 0 , is less than 1, the disease free steady state is stable. When R 0 > 1 the system can either converge to the chronic steady state, experience sustained oscillations, or approach the origin. We characterize parameter regions for all three situations, identify a Hopf and a homoclinic bifurcation point, and show how they depend on the basic reproduction number and the intrinsic growth rate of hepatocytes.
Uniform convergence estimates for multigrid V-cycle algorithms with less than full elliptic regularity

In this paper, we provide uniform estimates for V-cycle algorithms with one smoothing on each level. This theory is based on some elliptic regularity but does not require a smoother interaction hypothesis (sometimes referred to as a strengthened Cauchy Schwarz inequality) assumed in other theories. Thus, it is a natural extension of the full regularity V-cycle estimates provided by Braess and Hackbush.
Monadic Second Order Finite Satisfiability and Unbounded Tree-Width

The finite satisfiability problem of monadic second order logic is decidable only on classes of structures of bounded tree-width by the classic result of Seese (1991). We prove the following problem is decidable: Input: (i) A monadic second order logic sentence $\alpha$, and (ii) a sentence $\beta$ in the two-variable fragment of first order logic extended with counting quantifiers. The vocabularies of $\alpha$ and $\beta$ may intersect. Output: Is there a finite structure which satisfies $\alpha\land\beta$ such that the restriction of the structure to the vocabulary of $\alpha$ has bounded tree-width? (The tree-width of the desired structure is not bounded.) As a consequence, we prove the decidability of the satisfiability problem by a finite structure of bounded tree-width of a logic extending monadic second order logic with linear cardinality constraints of the form $|X_{1}|+\cdots+|X_{r}|<|Y_{1}|+\cdots+|Y_{s}|$, where the $X_{i}$ and $Y_{j}$ are monadic second order variables. We prove the decidability of a similar extension of WS1S.
In the Eye of the Beholder: Top Managers’ Long-Term Orientation, Industry Context, and Decision-Making Processes

Time orientation matters. While a temporal perspective is widely recognized as an important lens in strategic management research, few studies have explored how top managers’ temporal orientation affects strategic decision-making processes. We propose that top managers’ subjective perception of time, specifically, their long-term orientation, positively affects the comprehensiveness, speed, and creativity of strategic decision-making processes and that industry context moderates these relationships. Drawing on the organization-environment fit perspective and associated compatibility and temporal fit mechanisms, we found considerable support for our hypotheses in the semiconductor and pharmaceutical industries in China. Our findings reinforce the perspective that temporal referent points act as anchors for strategic decision-making processes.
Retinal target cells of the centrifugal projection from the isthmo‐optic nucleus

Although the avian retina has long been known to receive projection from a midbrain nucleus, the isthmo‐optic nucleus (ION), the output of its target cells has remained obscure. We labeled the isthmo‐optic (IO) terminals in the Japanese quail retina, by using anterograde transport of fluorescent tracer injected into the ION, and then labeled target cells for these terminals by means of intracellular tracer injection under direct microscopic observation. Somata of the IO target cells (IOTCs) lie in the innermost zone of the inner nuclear layer of the ventral half of the retina and have no dendrites but an axon. The axons run in the inner plexiform layer (IPL) for up to 6 mm and terminate densely in a round or elliptical terminal field, about 90–290 μm in diameter, of the outermost zone of the IPL. Longer axons (>2 mm) extend dorsally, but shorter ones (<1 mm) project ventrally or horizontally, so the terminals are distributed widely in both dorsal and ventral halves of the retina. The IOTCs cannot be classified into any of the five conventional major classes of retinal cells, including amacrine cells, and are thought to be “slave” neurons whose output is controlled by the neurons in the brain. Topographic separation between input to and output from the IOTCs by the axons might be essential for the overall topographic organization of the centrifugal visual system in birds. J. Comp. Neurol. 476:146–153, 2004. © 2004 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Co-Authorship Networks in Business Ethics: A Longitudinal Study

The primary objective of this study was to identify the evolution of collaboration among researchers in business ethics (BE) studies by employing a co-authorship analysis via a social network analysis. Four leading journals—Business and Society (BS), Business Ethics: A European Review (BEER), Business Ethics Quarterly (BEQ) and the Journal of Business Ethics (JBE)—were chosen to obtain BE articles that had been published between 1960 and 2015. First, a total of 7289 articles were collected. Then, the attributes of co-authorship networks, which included the assessment of co-authorship networks, a comparison of the attributes of the BE coauthorship network with those of other disciplines, a discussion of whether the small world network theory applied to the BE network and a visualization of critical authors, were explored. As one of the first studies in this field, these research findings provide specific theoretical and practical implications with limitations and the potential for expansion in future studies.
The Second Conference on the Lunar Highlands Crust and New Directions. Reflectance spectroscopy of plagioclase-dominated mineral mixtures: Implications for characterizing lunar anorthosites remotely

Abstract Anorthositic rocks dominate the Moon’s upper crust. As remnants of the lunar magma ocean (LMO), small variations in the mineralogy of these rocks may hold key information about the homogeneity of LMO composition and solidification processes. Orbital near-infrared (NIR) sensors are sensitive to mineralogy, but technologic advances have only recently enabled detection of the plagioclase component in crustal rocks based on an absorption band centered near 1250 nm. Anorthosites occupy a unique mineralogic range that is well suited for NIR studies: the highly transparent component, plagioclase, is present in high abundances while the spectrally dominant mafic or oxide minerals are present in only minor abundance. As a result, spectra of anorthosites are more likely than many other rock types to contain visually discernable signatures from more than one mineral component, facilitating their identification and characterization in NIR data. In support of new NIR measurements for the Moon, we present laboratory spectral analyses of well-controlled plagioclase-dominated mineral mixtures. We focus on the spectral effects of varying mafic and oxide composition and abundance in mixtures with a common plagioclase end-member. The results demonstrate that plagioclase can be a significant contributor to reflectance spectra when strongly absorbing minerals are present in low abundance. We show that the contribution of plagioclase is more pronounced in mixtures with pyroxenes and certain spinels, but more easily masked in mixtures containing small amounts of olivine. Differences in minor mineral composition are clearly expressed in bulk spectra. Modeling of mixtures using a Hapke nonlinear approach accurately estimates mineral abundances in laboratory spectra to within 5 vol% for mixtures with ≥90 vol% plagioclase. Together, these results imply that not only should orbital NIR data sets be able to discern the presence of plagioclase in anorthositic crustal exposures, but also that detailed information about anorthosite mineral assemblages can be reliably accessed in reflectance spectra.
The Lock-In Effect and the Corporate Payout Puzzle

Out of their after-tax prots, corporations pay dividends and often repurchase shares to generate capital gains for their shareholders. Capital gains typically attract lower eective rates of tax than dividends, which leads to the payout puzzle: Why do corporations continue to pay dividends in spite of their relative tax disadvantage? This paper develops a model of corporate payout policy to explain some aspects of the puzzle. The key element of the model is the lock-in eect caused by the fact that capital gains are taxed only upon realization, which
Neural correlates of facial expression processing during a detection task: An ERP study

Given finite attentional resources, how emotional aspects of stimuli are processed automatically is controversial. Present study examined the time-course for automatic processing of facial expression by assessing N170, and late positive potentials (LPPs) of event-related potentials (ERPs) using a modified rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) paradigm. Observers were required to confirm a certain house image and to detect whether a face image was presented at the end of a series of pictures. There were no significant main effects on emotional type for P1 amplitudes, whereas happy and fearful expressions elicited larger N170 amplitudes than neutral expressions. Significantly different LPP amplitudes were elicited depending on the type of emotional facial expressions (fear > happy > neutral). These results indicated that threatening priority was absent but discrimination of expressive vs. neutral faces occurred in implicit emotional tasks, at approximately 250 ms post-stimulus. Moreover, the three types of expressions were discriminated during the later stages of processing. Encoding emotional information of faces can be automated to a relatively higher degree, when attentional resources are mostly allocated to superficial analyzing.
Distinct clinical patterns and immune infiltrates are observed at time of progression on targeted therapy versus immune checkpoint blockade for melanoma

ABSTRACT We have made major advances in the treatment of melanoma through the use of targeted therapy and immune checkpoint blockade; however, clinicians are posed with therapeutic dilemmas regarding timing and sequence of therapy. There is a growing appreciation of the impact of antitumor immune responses to these therapies, and we performed studies to test the hypothesis that clinical patterns and immune infiltrates differ at progression on these treatments. We observed rapid clinical progression kinetics in patients on targeted therapy compared to immune checkpoint blockade. To gain insight into possible immune mechanisms behind these differences, we performed deep immune profiling in tumors of patients on therapy. We demonstrated low CD8+ T-cell infiltrate on targeted therapy and high CD8+ T-cell infiltrate on immune checkpoint blockade at clinical progression. These data have important implications, and suggest that antitumor immune responses should be assessed when considering therapeutic options for patients with melanoma.