Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Antiviral Action of Synthetic Stigmasterol Derivatives on Herpes Simplex Virus Replication in Nervous Cells In Vitro

Polyfunctionalized stigmasterol derivatives, (22S,23S)-22,23-dihydroxystigmast-4-en-3-one (compound 1) and (22S,23S)-3β-bromo-5α,22,23-trihydroxystigmastan-6-one (compound 2), inhibit herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV-1) replication and spreading in human epithelial cells derived from ocular tissues. Both compounds reduce the incidence and severity of lesions in a murine model of herpetic stromal keratitis when administered in different treatment modalities. Since encephalitis caused by HSV-1 is another immunopathology of viral origin, we evaluate here the antiviral effect of both compounds on HSV-1 infected nervous cell lines as well as their anti-inflammatory action. We found that both stigmasterol derivatives presented low cytotoxicity in the three nervous cell lines assayed. Regarding the antiviral activity, in all cases both compounds prevented HSV-1 multiplication when added after infection, as well as virus propagation. Additionally, both compounds were able to hinder interleukin-6 and Interferon-gamma secretion induced by HSV-1 infection in Neuro-2a cells. We conclude that compounds 1 and 2 have exerted a dual antiviral and anti-inflammatory effect in HSV-1 infected nervous cell lines, which makes them interesting molecules to be further studied.
Profile Injection Attack Detection for Securing Collaborative Recommender Systems 1

Researchers have shown that collaborative recommender systems, the most common type of web personalization system, are highly vulnerable to attack. Attackers can use automated means to inject a large number of biased profiles into such a system, resulting in recommendations that favor or disfavor given items. Since collaborative recommender systems must be open to user input, it is difficult to design a system that cannot be so attacked. Researchers studying robust recommendation have therefore begun to study mechanisms for recognizing and defeating attacks. In prior work, we have introduced a variety of attributes designed to detect profile injection attacks and evaluated their combined classification performance against several well studied attack models using supervised classification techniques. In this paper, we propose and study the impact the dimensions of attack type, attack intent, filler size, and attack size have on the effectiveness of such a detection scheme. We conclude by experimentally exploring the weaknesses of a detection scheme based on supervised classification, and techniques that can be combined with this approach to address these vulnerabilities.
Students’ and Teachers’ Awareness of and Attitude towards Environmental Pollution: A Multivariate Analysis Using Biographical Variables

Abstract The purpose was through a multivariate analysis, to examine students’ and teachers’ environmental Awareness and Attitude in relation to selected biographical data. Participants were Grade 8 to Grade 12 students with ages ranging between 13 years and 23 years (M = 16.5 years, SD = 1.8) as well as their teachers with ages ranging between 23 and 57 (M = 40.6 years, SD = 9.8). All were from schools within a precinct of coal mines and electricity generating power stations; this being industry that characteristically releases large amounts of carbon dioxide into the air. The basis of this investigation was the researchers’ argument that it is important for students in their teenage years to know and be aware of environmental matters because they will grow to be conscious and responsible adults who will take care of their environment. The researchers therefore determined the participants’ biographical factors that had an effect on environmental Awareness and Attitude. An Awareness and Attitude scale comprising 24 - items on a 5 point Likert type format was administered to students and teachers in the first quarter of 2012. Among students, no gender effects were found however, significant effects with respect to age and Attitude, as well as grade level and Awareness were established. For teachers, on the other hand, no significant effects were established for all the biographical variables tested. More pleasing was that teachers had higher scores with respect to environmental Awareness and Attitude compared with their students. The researchers argue that these findings are important because it is the teachers who will hopefully pass the proverbial baton to their students, for them to embrace environmental issues in the air polluted area whence they reside.
Ca 2 + Oscillations and Its Transporters in Mesenchymal Stem Cells

Intracellular free Ca 2+ is one of important biological signals regulating a number of cell functions. It has been discussed widely and extensively in several cell types during the past two decades. Attention has been paid to the Ca 2+ transportation in mesenchymal stem cells in recent years as mesenchymal stem cells have gained considerable interest due to their potential for cell replacement therapy and tissue engineering. In this paper, roles of intracellular Ca 2+ oscillations and its transporters in mesenchymal stem cells have been reviewed.
PI-0815 Optimal Asset Allocation Strategy for Defined-Contribution Pension Plans with Power Utility

Optimal asset allocation strategies of defined-contribution pension plans for members whose terminal utility is a power function of wealth-to-wage ratio is investigated in this paper. The portfolio problem is to maximize the expected terminal utility in the presence of three risk sources, interest risk, asset risk and wage risk. A closed form solution is found for the asset allocation problem and the optimal portfolio composition is horizon independent when there is no non-hedgeable wage risk or there is no further contribution from wage incomes. When future contributions from wage income are hedged by short-selling a wage replicating portfolio, the optimal composition of financial wealth on hand (i.e. pension portfolio wealth + short-sold wage replicating portfolio) is horizon-dependent. The optimal asset allocation strategy is equivalent to invest in two mutual funds, one of which is to hedge wage risk and the other a speculative fund to satisfy the risk appetite of the plan member.
Youth Lyrics, Street Language and the Politics of Age: Contextualising the Youth Question in the Third Chimurenga in Zimbabwe

Debates about the effects of the ‘cultural nationalism’ that has accompanied the so-called ‘Third Chimurenga’ in Zimbabwe since 2000, often portray youth as pawns of officials – for example, as national youth service trainees or as government sponsored artists – rather than as among the worst affected by recent developmental crises, who are struggling against the odds to survive. Yet concern about youth restlessness did, in part, lead to policies, such as the requirement of ‘75 per cent local content’ for public broadcasters, which created opportunities for youth action and led, in turn, to the development of a new musical style known as ‘urban grooves’. However, in 2007, Zimbabwean public radio and television banned the airplay of certain ‘urban grooves’ songs because of their unsavoury lyrics. In this article I analyse the lyrics of these songs in order to argue that together, the songs' lyrics, and their ban from airtime, point to emergent intergenerational tensions. Some of these tensions revolve around emerging forms, uses and meanings of vernacular languages. Whereas the 75 per cent local content policy imposed by the government in 2001 envisaged an anti-imperialist popular culture through the use of vernacular languages and local media products, youths used vernacular languages to highlight intergenerational sex differences in heterosexual behaviour. They used street language not ordinarily accessible to adults, to deliver an incisive critique of adult sexual excesses. As observed elsewhere in sub-Saharan Africa, not only do the banned songs provide an insight into youth subjectivities amidst the social contradictions of Zimbabwe's socio-economic and political crises, they also illustrate how popular music can be a form of civic participation.
Hippocampal volume and declarative memory function in combat-related PTSD

Abstract The proposition that declarative memory deficits are systematically related to smaller hippocampal volume was tested in a relatively large sample (n = 95) of U.S. military veterans with and without combat-related posttraumatic stress disorder. This correlative analysis was extended by including multiple measures of verbal and visual declarative memory and multiple memory-relevant regional brain volumes that had been shown to exhibit main effects of PTSD in prior work. Small-to-moderate effects were observed on verbal declarative memory in line with a recent meta-analysis; nevertheless, little or no evidence of systematic linear covariation between memory measures and brain volumes was observed. (JINS, 2009, 15, 830–839.)
Spatial Panel-data Models Using Stata

xsmle is a new user-written command for spatial analysis. We consider the quasi–maximum likelihood estimation of a wide set of both fixed- and random-effects spatial models for balanced panel data. xsmle allows users to handle unbalanced panels using its full compatibility with the mi suite of commands, use spatial weight matrices in the form of both Stata matrices and spmat objects, compute direct, indirect, and total marginal effects and related standard errors for linear (in variables) specifications, and exploit a wide range of postestimation features, including the panel-data case predictors of Kelejian and Prucha (2007, Regional Science and Urban Economics 37: 363–374). Moreover, xsmle allows the use of margins to compute total marginal effects in the presence of nonlinear specifications obtained using factor variables. In this article, we describe the command and all of its functionalities using simulated and real data.
Efficient algorithms for mining outliers from large data sets

In this paper, we propose a novel formulation for distance-based outliers that is based on the distance of a point from its kth nearest neighbor. We rank each point on the basis of its distance to its kth nearest neighbor and declare the top n points in this ranking to be outliers. In addition to developing relatively straightforward solutions to finding such outliers based on the classical nested-loop join and index join algorithms, we develop a highly efficient partition-based algorithm for mining outliers. This algorithm first partitions the input data set into disjoint subsets, and then prunes entire partitions as soon as it is determined that they cannot contain outliers. This results in substantial savings in computation. We present the results of an extensive experimental study on real-life and synthetic data sets. The results from a real-life NBA database highlight and reveal several expected and unexpected aspects of the database. The results from a study on synthetic data sets demonstrate that the partition-based algorithm scales well with respect to both data set size and data set dimensionality.
The Dark Side of Socially Mediated Rewards : How Narcissism and Social Status Affect Managerial Reporting

We extend prior research on performance reporting by examining how individual traits and environmental features affect the willingness of managers to report honestly. Drawing on research in psychology, we expect narcissism and the desire for social status to compete with preferences for honesty. To test our predictions, we use an experimental research design that orthogonalizes financial incentives (cash compensation) from non-financial incentives (social status). Consistent with our predictions, we find that narcissism, a stable and measurable personality trait, induces participants to inflate reported performance, but only when the participant views the task as important. We also provide evidence that these influences are especially pronounced when managers feel challenged to be the top performer. In addition, we find that even non-narcissistic participants are prone to inflate reported performance in settings that reward high reported performance with social status. Together, these results have several implications related to hiring practices and the design of control systems, as well as audit planning.
Identification from CCTV: Assessing police super‐recogniser ability to spot faces in a crowd and susceptibility to change blindness

Police worldwide regularly review CCTV evidence in investigations. This research found London police experts who work in a full-time ‘Super-Recogniser Unit’ and front line police identifiers regularly making suspect identifications from CCTV, possessed superior unfamiliar face recognition ability, and, with higher levels of confidence, outperformed controls at locating actors in a bespoke Spot the Face in a Crowd Test (SFCT). Police were also less susceptible to change blindness errors, and possessed higher levels of conscientiousness, and lower levels of neuroticism and openness. Controls who took part in SFCT actor familiarisation training outperformed untrained controls, suggesting this exercise might enhance identification of persons of interest in real investigations. This research supports an accumulating body of evidence demonstrating that international police forces may benefit from deploying officers with superior face recognition ability to roles such as CCTV review, as these officers may be the most likely to identify persons of interest.
Genetic Algorithm for Artiicial Neurogenesis

| This paper presents a neurogenesis process based on the protein regulation system. The novelty consists in applying some genetic algorithm work with neurogenesis, in particular work on genetic operators and work on tness landscapes. In order to get relevant tests with reduced simulation costs, neurogenesis is applied to a well know problem, the cart-pole system, then results are commented.
Particle motion driven by solute gradients with application to autonomous motion: continuum and colloidal perspectives

Diffusiophoresis, the motion of a particle in response to an externally imposed concentration gradient of a solute species, is analysed from both the traditional coarse-grained macroscopic (i.e. continuum) perspective and from a fine-grained micromechanical level in which the particle and the solute are treated on the same footing as Brownian particles dispersed in a solvent. It is shown that although the two approaches agree when the solute is much smaller in size than the phoretic particle and is present at very dilute concentrations, the micromechanical colloidal perspective relaxes these restrictions and applies to any size ratio and any concentration of solute. The different descriptions also provide different mechanical analyses of phoretic motion. At the continuum level the macroscopic hydrodynamic stress and interactive force with the solute sum to give zero total force, a condition for phoretic motion. At the colloidal level, the particle's motion is shown to have two contributions: (i) a ‘back-flow’ contribution composed of the motion of the particle due to the solute chemical potential gradient force acting on it and a compensating fluid motion driven by the long-range hydrodynamic velocity disturbance caused by the chemical potential gradient force acting on all the solute particles and (ii) an indirect contribution arising from the mutual interparticle and Brownian forces on the solute and phoretic particle, that contribution being non-zero because the distribution of solute about the phoretic particle is driven out of equilibrium by the chemical potential gradient of the solute. At the colloidal level the forces acting on the phoretic particle – both the statistical or ‘thermodynamic’ chemical potential gradient and Brownian forces and the interparticle force – are balanced by the Stokes drag of the solvent to give the net phoretic velocity. For a particle undergoing self-phoresis or autonomous motion, as can result from chemical reactions occurring asymmetrically on a particle surface, e.g. catalytic nanomotors, there is no imposed chemical potential gradient and the back-flow contribution is absent. Only the indirect Brownian and interparticle forces contribution is responsible for the motion. The velocity of the particle resulting from this contribution can be written in terms of a mobility times the integral of the local ‘solute pressure’ – the solute concentration times the thermal energy – over the surface of contact between the particle and the solute. This was the approach taken by Córdova-Figueroa & Brady (Phys. Rev. Lett., vol. 100, 2008, 158303) in their analysis of self-propulsion. It is shown that full hydrodynamic interactions can be incorporated into their analysis by a simple scale factor.
Expression of tumor-associated calcium signal transducer 2 in patients with salivary adenoid cystic carcinoma: Correlation with clinicopathological features and prognosis

Salivary adenoid cystic carcinoma (SACC) is a common salivary malignancy. The current treatment option for SACC is complete surgical excision with postoperative radiotherapy. The prognosis remains unsatisfactory, due to frequent local recurrence and distant metastases that directly reduce the overall survival time. Previous studies have shown that overexpression of tumor-associated calcium signal transducer 2 (TACSTD2) is associated with poor prognosis in various human epithelial cancers. The expression of TACSTD2 in SACC is currently unknown. The present study therefore aimed to retrospectively investigate TACSTD2 protein expression by immunohistochemistry on paraffin-embedded primary tumor tissue samples from a series of consecutive SACC patients (n=81). The correlation of TACSTD2 expression with clinicopathological variables was evaluated using either the Kruskal-Wallis or Mann-Whitney statistical tests. The survival curves were plotted using the Kaplan-Meier method. The parameters of prognostic significance found by univariate analysis were verified in a multivariate Cox regression model. Overexpression of TACSTD2 was detected in 35/81 (44%) SACC patients and was significantly associated with a decreased overall survival (P<0.01). Univariate analysis showed that TACSTD2 overexpression was correlated with TNM stage (P=0.020), local recurrence (P=0.002) and distant metastasis (P=0.001). Multivariate analyses further revealed that TACSTD2 may be an independent prognostic indicator. In conclusion, TACTSD2 could be recognized as an independent prognostic indicator for SACC. Gene therapy targeting TACSTD2 may be a possible treatment approach for patients with SACC overexpressing this cell-surface marker.
Metaanalytic connectivity modeling: Delineating the functional connectivity of the human amygdala

Functional neuroimaging has evolved into an indispensable tool for noninvasively investigating brain function. A recent development of such methodology is the creation of connectivity models for brain regions and related networks, efforts that have been inhibited by notable limitations. We present a new method for ascertaining functional connectivity of specific brain structures using metaanalytic connectivity modeling (MACM), along with validation of our method using a nonhuman primate database. Drawing from decades of neuroimaging research and spanning multiple behavioral domains, the method overcomes many weaknesses of conventional connectivity analyses and provides a simple, automated alternative to developing accurate and robust models of anatomically‐defined human functional connectivity. Applying MACM to the amygdala, a small structure of the brain with a complex network of connections, we found high coherence with anatomical studies in nonhuman primates as well as human‐based theoretical models of emotive‐cognitive integration, providing evidence for this novel method's utility. Hum Brain Mapp, 2010. © 2009 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
A Universal Framework for Inductive Transfer Parsing across Multi-typed Treebanks

Various treebanks have been released for dependency parsing. Despite that treebanks may belong to different languages or have different annotation schemes, they contain common syntactic knowledge that is potential to benefit each other. This paper presents a universal framework for transfer parsing across multi-typed treebanks with deep multi-task learning. We consider two kinds of treebanks as source: the multilingual universal treebanks and the monolingual heterogeneous treebanks. Knowledge across the source and target treebanks are effectively transferred through multi-level parameter sharing. Experiments on several benchmark datasets in various languages demonstrate that our approach can make effective use of arbitrary source treebanks to improve target parsing models.
From Bench to Board: Gender Differences in University Scientists’ Participation in Commercial Science

This paper examines gender differences in the participation of university life science faculty in commercial science. Based on theory and field interviews, we develop hypotheses regarding how scientists’ productivity, co-authorship networks, and institutional affiliations have different effects on whether male and female faculty become “academic entrepreneurs”. We then statistically examine this framework in a national sample of 6,000 life scientists whose careers span more than 20 years. We find sharp gender differences in participation in for-profit ventures, which we measure as the likelihood of joining the scientific advisory board (SAB) of a biotechnology firm. Compared to men, women life scientists are much less likely to advise for-profit biotechnology companies. We also identify factors that contour this gender difference, including scientists’ co-authorship network structure and the level of support for commercial science at their universities. Surprisingly, we find that the (conditional) gender gap is largest among faculty members at the highest status institutions.
An Integrated Global GIS and Visual Simulation System

This paper reports on an integrated visual simulation system supporting visualization of global multiresolution terrain elevation and imagery data, static and dynamic 3D objects with multiple levels of detail, non-protrusive features such as roads and rivers, distributed simulation and real-time sensor input, and an embedded geographic information system. The requirements of real-time rendering, very large datasets, and heterogeneous detail management strongly affect the structure of this system. Use of hierarchical spatial data structures and multiple coordinate systems allow for visualization and manipulation of huge terrain datasets spanning the entire surface of the Earth at resolutions well below one meter. The multithreaded nature of the system supports multiple windows with independent, stereoscopic views. The system is portable, built on OpenGL, POSIX threads, and X11/Motif windowed interface. It has been tested and evaluated in the field with a variety of terrain data, updates due to real-time sensor input, and display of networked DIS simulations.
Comparing physical, overlay, and touch screen parameter controls

We present a controlled laboratory experiment comparing touch, physical, and touch + overlay (passive finger guide) input for parameter control. Specifically we examined two target acquisition and movement tasks with dial and slider controls on horizontal touch screens. Results showed that physical controls were the fastest and required the least eye fixation time on the controls, while the overlay improved performance when compared to touch alone. Speed and accuracy differences were seen primarily for dial controls; there was little difference between input conditions for sliders. These results confirm the value of physical input devices for parameter control tasks. They also reveal that overlays can provide some of the same benefits, making them a suitable input approach for certain applications where physical controls are impractical.