Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Antigen recognition strength regulates the choice between extrafollicular plasma cell and germinal center B cell differentiation

B cells responding to T-dependent antigen either differentiate rapidly into extrafollicular plasma cells or enter germinal centers and undergo somatic hypermutation and affinity maturation. However, the physiological cues that direct B cell differentiation down one pathway versus the other are unknown. Here we show that the strength of the initial interaction between B cell receptor (BCR) and antigen is a primary determinant of this decision. B cells expressing a defined BCR specificity for hen egg lysozyme (HEL) were challenged with sheep red blood cell conjugates of a series of recombinant mutant HEL proteins engineered to bind this BCR over a 10,000-fold affinity range. Decreasing either initial BCR affinity or antigen density was found to selectively remove the extrafollicular plasma cell response but leave the germinal center response intact. Moreover, analysis of competing B cells revealed that high affinity specificities are more prevalent in the extrafollicular plasma cell versus the germinal center B cell response. Thus, the effectiveness of early T-dependent antibody responses is optimized by preferentially steering B cells reactive against either high affinity or abundant epitopes toward extrafollicular plasma cell differentiation. Conversely, responding clones with weaker antigen reactivity are primarily directed to germinal centers where they undergo affinity maturation.
On Being American Indian: Current and Possible Selves

Three studies using different methods (spontaneous self-descriptions, possible selves, and endorsement of independence/interdependence) examined American Indian (AI) and European American (EA) self-understanding at three age levels (Junior High—6–8th grade, High School—9–12th grade, and University). AI, in comparison to EA, generated fewer statements overall, used fewer categories of response, and made reference to fewer positive attributes and abilities. Reflecting a pervasive concern with interdependence, AI were more likely to describe themselves in terms of other-focused actions (e.g., I work hard because others are counting on me) and to endorse interdependence than were EA. However, reflecting a simultaneous concern with some aspects of independence, AI emphasized self-improvement in their self-descriptions, achievement in their possible selves, and strongly endorsed items relating to self-knowledge. AI reported more feared selves related to poverty and deviant behavior than did EA. Both AI and EA High School and University students were more likely to strongly endorse independence than were Junior High school students from both groups. In general, AI independence appears to emphasize individuality, but this concern for self does not preclude a concern for and a connection to others.
On Gender Inequality and Life Satisfaction: Does Discrimination Matter?

This paper analyzes the impact of gender discrimination on individual life satisfaction using a cross-section of 66 countries. We employ measures of discrimination of women in the economy, in politics, and in society more generally. According to our results, discrimination in politics is important to individual well-being. Overall, men and women are more satisfied with their lives when societies become more equal. Disaggregated analysis suggests that our results for men are driven by the effect of equality on men with middle and high incomes, and those on the political left. To the contrary, women are more satisfied with increasing equality independent of income and political ideology. Equality in economic and family matters does overall not affect life satisfaction. However, women are more satisfied with their lives when discriminatory practices have been less prevalent in the economy 20 years ago.
The Use Of The Circle Tree For The Efficient Storage Of Polygons

Biography Lecturer in Spatial Information, University of Otago, NZ (2002-) Recently completed PhD (Geographical Sciences, University of Plymouth, 2002) on reasoning with uncertainty in the context of a knowledge-based system for Integrated Coastal Zone Management. Research interests also include spatial data structures, cartographic generalisation and visualisation (spatio-temporal, uncertainty)
Relations between informational sources, self-efficacy and academic achievement: a developmental approach

As a cognitive-motivational construct, self-efficacy has been researched extensively and has involved two important lines of inquiries, namely the impact of sources of information on self-efficacy and the predictive effect of self-efficacy on learning outcomes. We proposed and tested the relations between the four major sources of information (enactive performance accomplishments, vicarious experiences, verbal persuasion and emotional and physiological states), self-efficacy and academic achievement for mathematics and science within one conceptual model. Our model was tested with the conjunctive use of longitudinal data and latent growth curve modelling (LGM) procedures. Two hundred and fifty-two (110 girls, 142 boys) upper elementary school children from three government schools participated in this longitudinal study. Likert-scale inventories were administered over four occasions within a one-year period. We measured the four sources of information at T 1, whereas self-efficacy for mathematics and science was measured at T 2–T 4, and academic achievement was measured at T 4 only. SPSS AMOS v18 was used to test a number of a priori multivariate growth curve models. LGM analyses provided moderate evidence in support of our conceptual model, noting different patterns of trajectories for both mathematics and science.
Diverse Helotiales associated with the roots of three species of Arctic Ericaceae provide no evidence for host specificity.

Ericoid mycorrhizal fungi differ in their abilities to use nitrogen sources and may be integral to maintaining fungal and plant diversity in ecosystems in which Ericaceae occur. In this study, we tested whether the fungal communities differ among three species of co-occurring Ericaceae. Fungi colonizing Cassiope tetragona, Empetrum nigrum and Vaccinium vitis-idaea roots in the Arctic tundra were characterized via culture-dependent and culture-independent techniques. The cultured fungi were tested for their ability to colonize Vaccinium uliginosum in laboratory-based assays. The pure-cultured Helotiales were grouped into eight clades and dominated by the Phialocephala-Acephala complex. Representatives of these clades, plus an unknown basidiomycete with affinity to the genus Irpex (Polyporales), colonized V. uliginosum intracellularly. The Helotiales detected by direct PCR, cloning and sequencing were assigned to 14 clades and dominated by members of the Rhizoscyphus ericae complex. Ordination analyses indicated that culture-dependent and culture-independent assays provided distinct views of root fungal communities, but no evidence for host specificity. These data suggest that ericaceous roots host diverse fungal communities dominated by the Helotiales. However, these fungal communities are unlikely to be controlled by fungal host preferences. The mechanisms maintaining high diversity in root-symbiotic communities remain to be elucidated.
Effects of Sensory Deficit on Phalanx Force Deviation During Power Grip Post Stroke

ABSTRACT The effect of sensory deficits on power grip force from individual phalanges was examined. The authors found that stroke survivors with sensory deficits (determined by the Semmes-Weinstein monofilament test) gripped with phalanx force directed more tangential to the object surface, than those without, although both groups had similar motor deficits (Chedoke-McMaster and Fugl-Meyer), grip strength, and skin friction. Altered grip force direction elevates risk of finger slippage against the object thus grip loss/object dropping, hindering activities of daily living. Altered grip force direction was associated with altered muscle activation patterns. In summary, the motor impairment level alone may not describe hand motor control in detail. Information about sensory deficits helps elucidate patients' hand motor control with functional relevance.
Women, Language and Identity

This paper explores the ways in which women and men use language to mark gender boundaries, and to convey femininity and masculinity in the construction of a gendered identity. The first section of the paper examines evidence that language serves as a gender identity marker not only in the particular phonological variants used more by women than by men, but also in the wider stylistic range evident in women’s discourse in some communities. The gender distribution and social meanings associated with particular pragmatic particles and interactional devices provide another indication of the ways in which women and men construct and express femininity and masculinity in interaction. The final section analyses the construction of stereotypical gender identities through conversational interaction, firstly by means of a narrative and secondly through the carefully crafted dialogue of an advertisement. The paper demonstrates the complementary nature of macro-level quantitative studies and qualitative ethnographic analysis in gender research.
Crosstalk between CCL7 and CCR3 promotes metastasis of colon cancer cells via ERK-JNK signaling pathways

Chemokine ligand 7 (CCL7) enhances cancer progression and metastasis via epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT). However, little is known about the molecular mechanism of CCL7-induced EMT signaling cascade in colon cancer. Thus, the objective of this study was to investigate CCL7-induced EMT signaling pathway and its role in the progression and metastasis of colon cancer. To demonstrate the effect of CCL7 on EMT induction, HCT116 and HT29 cells overexpressing CCL7 were generated. CCL7-induced EMT and its downstream signaling pathway were evaluated by both in vitro and in vivo experiments. In in vitro studies, CCL7 was found to interplay with CC chemokine receptor 3 (CCR3), resulting in enhanced cellular proliferation, invasion, and migration via ERK and JNK signaling pathway. To validate these findings, we established ectopic and orthotopic mouse models injected with CCL7-overexpressed cells. In ectopic mouse models, we observed that CCL7-overexpressed cells grew significantly faster than control cells. In orthotopic mouse models, we found that liver and lung metastasis developed only in mice injected with CCL7-overexpressed cells. This study is the first one focusing on the EMT cascade via CCL7-CCR3-ERK-JNK signaling axis in colon cancer. Our novel findings will improve our understanding on the mechanism of metastatic process and provide potential therapeutic strategies for preventing metastasis in colon cancer.
Understanding Employee Turnover: The Need for a Contingency Approach

A strong body of research evidence has shown that better predictions of organizational phenomena would be achieved if greater emphasis was put on the interactive effects of potential independent variables. As an integral part of that research, contingency theory has been a landmark approach to organizational analysis. Draws on the main body of literature and attempts to show that contingency theory and its basic postulate would strongly benefit the study of employee turnover. Argues that voluntary employee turnover is contingent on the amount of fit/misfit between individual values and the predominant organizational structure/management style. Shows and suggests that the use of a contingency approach to employee turnover could be of great benefit in future research designed to enhance our understanding of this complex phenomenon.
Functional Communication Training

Thirty years ago, the first experimental demonstration was published showing that educators could improve significant challenging behavior in children with disabilities by replacing these behaviors with forms of communication that served the same purpose, a procedure called functional communication training (FCT). Since the publication of that paper, hundreds of demonstrations of the effectiveness of this approach have been published. This article describes the original study, the basic steps involved in using FCT, and how this approach can be used to reduce challenging behavior among toddlers and preschoolers.
Comparing Search Algorithms Using Sorting and Hashing on Disk and in Memory

We compare sorting and hashing for implicit graph search using disk storage. We first describe efficient pipelined implementations of both algorithms, which reduce disk I/O. We then compare the two algorithms and find that hashing is faster, but that sorting requires less disk storage. We also compare disk-based with in-memory search, and surprisingly find that there is little or no time overhead associated with disk-based search. We present experimental results on the sliding-tile puzzles, Rubik's Cube, and the 4-peg Towers of Hanoi.
The Impact of Alternate Assessments

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) Amendments of 1997 require that all states, by July 2000, will have developed and implemented alternate assessment methods for those students with disabilities who cannot be included within regular state and local district educational assessment and accountability measures. A statewide survey of teachers involved in the nation's first alternate assessment and accountability system for students with moderate and severe disabilities was conducted to determine the extent to which these teachers perceived benefits of including their students in state and school accountability measures, as well as their perceptions of the instructional impact of the alternate system upon student outcomes. The results of this survey indicated that teachers did realize such benefits, and perceived positive changes in both instructional programming (e.g., students' learning to follow their own individualized schedules, students' learning to assess their own performance) and enhanced student outcomes (an increased percentage of students having functional augmentative communication systems). However, teachers also expressed frustration with the amount of time required to complete student assessment portfolios, and concern over scoring reliability and the extent to which the alternate assessment was more of a teacher assessment than a student assessment.
Seizure Prophylaxis in Neurocritical Care: A Review of Evidence‐Based Support

Seizures are a well‐described complication of acute brain injury and neurosurgery. Antiepileptic drugs (AEDs) are frequently utilized for seizure prophylaxis in neurocritical care patients. In this review, the Neurocritical Care Society Pharmacy Section describes the evidence associated with the use of AEDs for seizure prophylaxis in patients with intracerebral tumors, traumatic brain injury, aneurysmal subarachnoid hemorrhage, craniotomy, ischemic stroke, and intracerebral hemorrhage. Clear evidence indicates that the short‐term use of AEDs for seizure prophylaxis in patients with traumatic brain injury and aneurysmal subarachnoid hemorrhage may be beneficial; however, evidence to support the use of AEDs in other disease states is less clear.
Integration of color, orientation, and size functional domains in the ventral pathway

Abstract. Functional specialization within the extrastriate areas of the ventral pathway associated with visual form analysis is poorly understood. Studies comparing the functional selectivities of neurons within the early visual areas have found that there are more similar than different between the areas. We simultaneously imaged visually evoked activation over regions of V2 and V4 and parametrically varied three visual attributes for which selectivity exists in both areas: color, orientation, and size. We found that color selective regions were observed in both areas and were of similar size and spatial distribution. However, two major areal distinctions were observed: V4 contained a greater number and diversity of color-specific regions than V2 and exhibited a higher degree of overlap between domains for different functional attributes. In V2, size and color regions were largely segregated from orientation domains, whereas in V4 both color and size regions overlapped considerably with orientation regions. Our results suggest that higher-order composite selectivities in the extrastriate cortex may arise organically from the interactions afforded by an overlap of functional domains for lower order selectivities.
Whose Body Matters? Feminist Sociology and the Corporeal Turn in Sociology and Feminism

This article proposes that the urgent task for feminist sociology is to recuperate those lost or residual `body matters' which lurk, unattended to, on the sidelines of the social. Feminist sociology must carefully negotiate the complex space between sociality and corporeality. The new feminist philosophies of the body tend sometimes to grate against this project by valorizing the body but de-valorizing gender. The new sociology of the body is recuperating the body within sociology, but pays insufficient attention to the ways in which gendered bodies have always enjoyed varying degrees of absence or presence in the sociological imaginary - in the guise of `female corporeality' and `male embodiment'. By revisiting the classical texts of sociology, such as those of Durkheim, Weber and particularly Simmel, I explore the textual strategies whereby `the body' and `the social' were dissociated in the first place and how, simultaneously, woman is saturated with, while man is divested of, corporeality and she is divested while he is invested with sociality. The absent women in sociology were the women in the body excluded from the social. It is male bodies which animate the social - they appear for a fleeting moment, only to disappear immediately, in the space between `corporeality' and `sociality'. Thus, it is not simply a case of recuperating bodies into the social, but of excavating the gendered subtexts whereby gendered bodies were differently inscribed into and out of the social in the first place. The crucial point here is not the more familiar story of her saturation with corporeality but the less familiar one of what happened to his body - how, that is, did male sociologists effect the disappearance of their own bodies in the textual strategies of sociology?
Application of phosphorylation site-specific antibodies to measure nuclear receptor signaling: characterization of novel phosphoantibodies for estrogen receptor α

An understanding of posttranslational events in nuclear receptor signaling is crucial for drug design and clinical therapeutic strategies. Phosphorylation is a well-characterized posttranslational modification that regulates subcellular localization and function of nuclear receptors and coregulators. Although the role of single phosphorylation sites in nuclear receptor function has been described, the contribution of combinations of multiple phosphorylation sites to receptor function remains unclear. The development of phosphoantibodies to each phosphorylation site in a nuclear receptor is a powerful tool to address the role of phosphorylation in multiply phosphorylated receptors. However, phosphoantibodies must be rigorously validated prior to use. This review describes the general methodology for design, characterization and validation of phosphoantibodies using the example of eight phosphoantibodies raised against phosphorylation sites in estrogen receptor α (ERα).
Natural Language Understanding with Distributed Representation

This is a lecture note for the course DS-GA 3001 at the Center for Data Science , New York University in Fall, 2015. As the name of the course suggests, this lecture note introduces readers to a neural network based approach to natural language understanding/processing. In order to make it as self-contained as possible, I spend much time on describing basics of machine learning and neural networks, only after which how they are used for natural languages is introduced. On the language front, I almost solely focus on language modelling and machine translation, two of which I personally find most fascinating and most fundamental to natural language understanding.
Improving the learning of newly qualified teachers in the induction year

Newly qualified teachers of mathematics and science are a precious resource and it important that they are provided with appropriate support and challenge during their first year in post. This study examines the developing thinking and practice of a group of such teachers in England and the influence of their mentors within the workplace context of the school. We argue that thinking and practice is restricted by the concern to ‘fit in’, by the belief that behaviour management should be addressed before teaching can be developed and by a lack of attention to the development of pedagogical thinking. We conclude that there is a need to change the beliefs and practices of induction mentors and develop their skills in discussing pedagogical ideas. This is most likely to be achieved within a school‐wide culture of continuing professional learning.
Scolarité et autres caractéristiques socio-démographiques des enfants de mariages rompus.

Résumé Ní Bhrolcháin (Maire), Chappell (Roma), Diamond (Ian). - Scolarité et autres caractéristiques socio-démographiques des enfants de mariages rompus Un échantillon d'enfants nés en 1958 en Grande-Bretagne a fait l'objet de vagues d'enquêtes successives à 7 ans, 16 ans, 23 et 33 ans qui ont permis de déterminer leur situation familiale à ces diverses dates et d'y enregistrer des renseignements sur leur scolarité, le mode de vie et les attitudes de leurs parents, etc. On étudie ici un groupe de 7 866 garçons et filles qui vivaient avec leurs deux parents à 7 ans et dont environ 9 % ont vu ceux-ci se séparer ou décéder dans les neuf ans qui ont suivi. Nous comparons la fréquence de divers comportements survenus entre 16 et 23 ans (quitter l'école, quitter le foyer parental, former un couple, avoir un enfant) selon que ces enfants sont restés avec leurs parents unis ou ont vécu la désunion de ceux-ci. On a rendu aussi comparable que possible les deux groupes sur toutes les caractéristiques familiales et personnelles qu'on a pu saisir avant l'âge de 7 ans. Au total, il est rare que les comportements des adolescents diffèrent fortement en fonction de l'histoire familiale vécue pendant l'enfance. Une analyse statistique minutieuse ne confirme donc pas l'idée a priori d'une influence à long terme de la désunion des parents sur les comportements scolaires et socio-démographiques de leurs enfants.