Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
META-Controlled env-Initiated Transcripts Encoding Superantigens of Murine Mtv29 and Mtv7 and Their Possible Role in B Cell Lymphomagenesis1

Spontaneous germinal center (GC)-derived B cell lymphomas of SJL mice (RCS) transcribe a 1.8-kb Mtv-29 mRNA under control of the META-env promoter. The encoded vSAg29 stimulates syngeneic Vβ16+ CD4+ T cells, thereby acquiring T cell help necessary for RCS growth. Other strains of B cell lymphoma-prone mice include Mtv29+ C57L and MA/MyJ, and the Mtv29− Mtv7+-recombinant inbred strain, SW × J-1. The lymphomas of these mice produce similar mouse mtv-vSAg-encoding mRNA, as characterized by Northern blotting, PCR, and RNase protection. A 1.8-kb mRNA in C57L/J and MA/MyJ lymphomas hybridized with an Mtv29-specific oligonucleotide, whereas SW × J-1 lymphomas produced 1.8-kb transcripts hybridizing with an Mtv7-specific oligonucleotide. Similar META-env-initiated transcripts were absent from LPS-activated B cells from any strain examined but were detected in Peyer’s patch RNA from SJL mice. Like typical SJL-derived RCS, all these lymphomas stimulated syngeneic CD4+ T cells and Vβ16+ T hybridoma cells. Immunohistochemical staining of primary tumors showed the presence of peanut agglutinin binding (PNA+) highly mitotic lymphoblasts, suggesting their GC derivation. The findings indicate that this novel mRNA for Mtv29 is present in B cell lymphomas from several Mtv29+ mouse strains. Additionally, this is the first description of the ability of Mtv7 to produce transcripts that are controlled and spliced identically to those of Mtv29 and that are expressed in SW × J-1, I-As+, lymphomas that also stimulate Vβ16+ T cells. Our results suggest an important role for mouse mtv-vSAgs and Vβ16 T cell stimulation in the development of GC-derived murine B cell lymphomas.
Skin in the Game: Incentives in Crowdfunding

This paper analyses the incentives in the new and significantly growing markets for crowdfunding. In these consumer lending markets, lenders can give their money directly to borrowers without the intermediation of a financial institution. We are able to take advantage of the elimination of origination fees (group leader rewards) in an online social lending market and use a difference-in-difference approach to see how the same lenders behave when the origination fees are eliminated. The results show that there is a marked change in the incentives of these group leaders, which affect the kind of loans being originated and the performance of these loans. When group leaders earn rewards, the default rates are substantially higher for the loans that they originate, while, after the abolition of rewards, group leaders originate loans with significantly lower borrower default rates. We also find that, in the presence of rewards, only when group leaders have a substantial share of the originated loan are the default rates lower. The results provide important implications for the incentives in crowdfunding as well as the question of how retail consumers can be protected against unscrupulous lending and thus the ongoing debate about the proper regulatory framework for consumer lending.
Privacy-preserving social recommendations in geosocial networks

Geosocial networks like Foursquare have enabled people to conveniently share their whereabouts with their friends online, such as sharing check-ins at visited venues. This information could be utilized by recommender systems to improve the recommendation accuracy, known as social recommendations. However, incorporating social context into recommender systems introduces new privacy threats to users. We design a framework to achieve the benefits of social recommendations while preserving the privacy of social relations and considering the business interests of the service provider (SP). Namely, we propose that each user manages social relations locally and participates in computing social recommendations without revealing social relations to the SP and without the SP revealing proprietary information to a user. In addition, we identify three classes of inference attacks where the SP may infer the existence of social relations by monitoring users' individual check-in histories. Furthermore, we propose using private check-ins to defend against such attacks. Finally, we conduct a comprehensive performance evaluation over large-scale real-world datasets. The results suggest that the proposed privacy-preserving framework is feasible on a smart phone and only slightly affects the overall performance of recommender systems.
Universally near-optimal online power control for energy harvesting nodes

We consider online power control for an energy harvesting system with random i.i. d. energy arrivals and a finite size battery. We propose a simple online power control policy for this channel that requires minimal information regarding the distribution of the energy arrivals and prove that it is universally near-optimal for all parameter values. In particular, the policy depends on the distribution of the energy arrival process only through its mean and achieves the optimal long-term average throughput of the channel within a constant gap. Existing heuristics for online power control fail to achieve such universal performance. This result also allows us to obtain a simple constant-gap approximation for the long-term average throughput of the system, which sheds some light on the qualitative behavior of the throughput, namely how it depends on the distribution of the energy arrivals and the size of the battery.
An Alternative Approach to Firms' Evaluation: Expert Systems and Fuzzy Logic

Discounted cash flow techniques are the generally accepted methods for valuing firms. Such methods do not provide explicit acknowledgment of the value determinants and overlook their interrelations. This paper proposes a different method of firm valuation based on fuzzy logic and expert systems. It does represent a conceptual transposition of discounted cash flow techniques but, unlike the latter, it takes explicit account of quantitative and qualitative variables and their mutual integration. Financial, strategic and business aspects are considered by focusing on 29 value drivers that are combined together via "if–then" rules. The output of the system is a real number in the interval [0, 1], which represents the value-creation power of the firm. To corroborate the model a sensitivity analysis is conducted. The system may be used for rating and ranking firms as well as for assessing the impact of managers' decisions on value creation and as a tool of corporate governance.
Main Studies That Investigated the Role of mTOR Kinase in the Regulation of Cardiac Physiology and Response to Stress In Vivo Cardiac Condition Study Type of mTOR Modulation and Animal Model Effect on the Heart Development / physiological conditions

The protein kinase mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) was purified and characterized for the first time in mammalian cells in the independent works conducted by Brown et al, Sabatini et al, and Sabers et al in 1994 and 1995. mTOR is an atypical serine/threonine kinase that exerts its main cellular functions by interacting with specific adaptor proteins to form 2 distinct multiprotein complexes, mTOR complex 1 (mTORC1) and mTOR complex 2 (mTORC2). mTOR signaling plays a key role in the regulation of cell homeostasis and stress responses. mTORC1 is a master regulator of protein synthesis, cell growth and proliferation, ribosomal and mitochondrial biogenesis, autophagy, and metabolism. In addition, mTORC1 inhibition during stress is an adaptive response that promotes the upregulation of stress responsive mechanisms. Whereas, mTORC2 seems to regulate cell survival and polarity (Figure 1). Studies of animal models with loss of function of the components of mTOR complexes have indicated that mTOR is involved in the regulation of embryonic cardiovascular development and in the control of vital cellular processes necessary for normal postnatal growth and maintenance of cardiac function. Cardiac deletion of mTOR is associated with a high rate of embryonic lethality, and cardiac disruption of the components of mTORC1 is associated with cardiac dilation, dysfunction, apoptosis, mitochondrial and metabolic derangements, heart failure, and, ultimately, mortality in the postnatal stage. In addition, complete genetic disruption of mTORC1 impairs the ability of the heart to respond to pressure overload and to undergo compensatory hypertrophy, resulting in the development of dilated cardiomyopathy. However, the available evidence suggests that partial and selective inhibition of mTORC1 is cardioprotective during aging and cardiac stress. mTORC1 inhibition extends the life span of mice. It also reduces cardiac hypertrophy and improves cardiac function in the presence of pressure overload and genetic cardiomyopathies and reduces ischemic injury after acute and chronic myocardial infarction. Finally, the inhibition of mTORC1 reactivates cardiac autophagy, which is impaired in the presence of obesity and metabolic syndrome. These results are likely dependent on the fact that partial inhibition of mTORC1 eliminates the detrimental effects of the maladaptive functions of mTORC1 during cardiac stress, while maintaining its physiological functions. In this regard, it is known that rapalogs do not inhibit all the functions of mTORC1. Review
Multi-Gb/s Bit-by-Bit Receiver Architectures for 1-D Partial-Response Channels

Low-complexity bit-by-bit detection techniques for 1-D partial-response channels are presented. First, a full-rate detection technique is presented which operates at 3.3 Gb/s consuming 40 mA from a 1.8-V supply with a sensitivity of 40-mV differential. The speed of the full-rate architecture is limited by the settling time of a latch circuit which has to be less than 1 UI. To eliminate this limitation, a novel demuxing technique is introduced. Using the proposed technique, a second architecture achieves 5 Gb/s data rate with the same sensitivity and consuming 62 mA (including output buffer) from 1.8-V supply. Both half-rate and full-rate architectures are also studied in 90-nm CMOS targeting chip-to-chip applications. The implemented full-rate architecture operates at 10 Gb/s consuming 32 mW, whereas the simulated half-rate architecture consumes 50 mW and operates at 16.67 Gb/s.
Specifying Reusable Security Requirements

Unlike typical functional requirements, security requirements can potentially be highly reusable, especially if specified as instances of reusable templates. In this column, I will discuss the concepts underlying security engineering including its quality subfactors. I will then address the issue of security requirements and how they differ from the architectural mechanisms that will fulfill them. Then, I will discuss the value of reusable parameterized templates for specifying security requirements and provide an example of such a template and its associated usage. Finally, I will outline an asset-based riskdriven analysis approach for determining the appropriate actual parameters to use when reusing such parameterized templates to specify security requirements.
Extracting Translations Verb Frames*

We describe a method for extracting translation verb frames (parallel subcategorization frames) from a parallel dependency treebank. The extracted frames constitute an important part of machine translation dictionary for a structural machine translation system. We evaluate our method independently, using a manually annotated test dataset, and conclude that the bottleneck of the method lies in quality of automatic word alignment of the training data.
Development of auditory-visual speech perception in English-speaking children: the role of language-specific factors

It has been found that auditory-visual speech perception differs over languages, particularly between English and Japanese speakers. This difference emerges due to increased use of visual information by English speakers between 6 and 8 years [14]. This study investigates the linguistic factors that may cause changes in auditory-visual speech perception development. Children aged between 5 and 8 years were given tests of reading, articulation, language-specific speech perception and auditory-visual speech perception. The results show that only language-specific speech perception predicts auditory-visual speech perception. Possible reasons for this relationship are discussed.
Impact of erectile dysfunction and its subsequent treatment with sildenafil: qualitative study

Abstract Objectives To determine the effects of erectile dysfunction and to explore the impact of treatment with sildenafil (Viagra). Design An exploratory qualitative study with semistructured interviews. Setting Men's health clinic in NHS hospital. Participants 40 men who had had erectile dysfunction and had attended the clinic during the year before interview. Main outcome measures Impact of erectile dysfunction on men, their expectations ofsildenafil, and impact of treatment on men and their relationships. Issues explored with exploratory qualitative approach. Results Erectile dysfunction caused serious distress to all those men who experienced it, with marked effects on their self esteem and their relationships. Sildenafil, when it worked, caused a great improvement in wellbeing. The expectations raised by media hyperbole with the launch of sildenafil had an adverse effect on the morale of those who found it did not work. When, according to the patient, treatment did not work, the distress was severe and for many confirmed their lack of self worth. Conclusions Further study is needed to explore the feelings of men affected by erectile dysfunction and their perception of treatment. Health professionals should be aware of the extreme distress erectile dysfunction can cause.
Immunohistochemical staining of Ki-67 using the monoclonal antibody Ki-s11 is a prognostic indicator for laryngeal squamous cell carcinoma.

BACKGROUND Proliferative activity has been shown to be of prognostic significance for several malignancies. Ki-67, a cell cycle associated antigen, is regarded as a promising proliferation marker. Very few results on the proliferative activity of head and neck cancer and their potential prognostic value are available. MATERIALS AND METHODS The proliferative activity of 104 squamous cell carcinomas of the larynx (SCCL) was analyzed retrospectively with the monoclonal antibody Ki-S11 which specifically detects the Ki-67 antigen. Median follow-up time was 47 months. RESULTS There was a statistically significant correlation (p<0.05) between histopathological grading, N-status and proliferative activity. There was also a significant difference for the 5-year survival between low and highly proliferating tumours. The patient group with low proliferating laryngeal cancer had a statistically (p<0.05) longer absolute and recurrence-free 5-year-survival time than patients with a highly proliferating cancer. CONCLUSION These results show that Ki-67 staining of SCCL with Ki-S11 is a helpful prognostic indicator for squamous cell carcinoma of the larynx with a potential clinical application.
A Drosophila model to investigate the neurotoxic side effects of radiation exposure

ABSTRACT Children undergoing cranial radiation therapy (CRT) for pediatric central nervous system malignancies are at increased risk for neurological deficits later in life. We have developed a model of neurotoxic damage in adult Drosophila following irradiation during the juvenile stages with the goal of elucidating underlying neuropathological mechanisms and of ultimately identifying potential therapeutic targets. Wild-type third-instar larvae were irradiated with single doses of γ-radiation, and the percentage that survived to adulthood was determined. Motor function of surviving adults was examined with a climbing assay, and longevity was assessed by measuring lifespan. Neuronal cell death was assayed by using immunohistochemistry in adult brains. We also tested the sensitivity at different developmental stages by irradiating larvae at various time points. Irradiating late third-instar larvae at a dose of 20 Gy or higher impaired the motor activity of surviving adults. A dose of 40 Gy or higher resulted in a precipitous reduction in the percentage of larvae that survive to adulthood. A dose-dependent decrease in adult longevity was paralleled by a dose-dependent increase in activated Death caspase-1 (Dcp1) in adult brains. Survival to adulthood and adult lifespan were more severely impaired with decreasing larval age at the time of irradiation. Our initial survey of the Drosophila Genetic Reference Panel demonstrated that differences in genotype can confer phenotypic differences in radio-sensitivity for developmental survival and motor function. This work demonstrates the usefulness of Drosophila to model the toxic effects of radiation during development, and has the potential to unravel underlying mechanisms and to facilitate the discovery of novel therapeutic interventions. Highlighted Article: To model delayed neurological deficits resulting from pediatric cranial radiation therapy, neurotoxic damage in adult Drosophila is assessed following larval irradiation with the goal of elucidating underlying pathological mechanisms.
Analysis of side-plated reinforced concrete beams with partial interaction

Existing reinforced concrete (RC) beams can be strengthened with externally bolted steel plates to the sides of beams. The effectiveness of this type of bolted side-plate (BSP) beam can however be affected by partial interaction between the steel plates and RC beams due to the mechanical slip of bolts. To avoid over-estimation of the flexural strength and ensure accurate prediction of the load-deformation response of the beams, the effect of partial interaction has to be properly considered. In this paper, a special non-linear macro-finite-element model that takes into account the effects of partial interaction is proposed. The RC beam and the steel plates are modelled as two different elements, interacting through discrete groups of bolts. A layered method is adopted for the formulation of the RC beam and steel plate elements, while a special non-linear model based on a kinematic hardening assumption for the bolts is used to simulate the bolt group effect. The computer program SiBAN was developed based on the proposed approach. Comparison with the available experimental results shows that SiBAN can accurately predict the partial interaction behaviour of the BSP beams. Further numerical simulations show that the interaction between the RC beam and the steel plates is greatly reduced by the formation of plastic hinges and should be considered in analyses of the strengthened beams.
Seasonal Change in Osteoid Thickness and Mineralization Lag Time in Ambulant Patients

Low vitamin D levels are common. Bone biopsies taken from 121 ambulant patients were therefore reviewed. Seasonal changes in mineralization correlated inversely with serum 25‐hydroxyvitamin D but not the more active metabolite, 1,25‐dihydroxyvitamin D. This implies that the latter is produced in bone.
Source (or Part of the following Source): Type Article Title Deep Brain Stimulation of the Subthalamic Nucleus Improves Reward-based Decision-learning in Parkinson's Disease Author(s) the Role of the Subthalamic Nucleus in Reward-based Decision-learning

Copyright It is not permitted to download or to forward/distribute the text or part of it without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), other than for strictly personal, individual use, unless the work is under an open content licence (like Creative Commons). UvA-DARE is a service provided by the library of the University of Amsterdam (http://dare.uva.nl) Parkinson's disease is a neurodegenerative condition that affects dopaminergic neurons of the substantia nigra that project in a compact bundle of fibers to the dorsolateral striatum (mostly the putamen; Bjorklund and Dunnett, 2007). DA projections within the striatum are differentially affected by the progression of PD. Early in the disease, dopamine is most severely depleted in motor areas (putamen and supplementary motor areas), which produce motor deficits, such as tremor, bradykinesia, and rigidity (McAuley, 2003). As the disease progresses, dopamine depletions affecting cognitive circuits of the basal ganglia contribute to impairments in reversal Although the most common treatment for PD consists of dopamine (DA) precursors (typically l-DOPA) and agonists, DBS of the STN has become the treatment of choice in patients whose symptoms are less well controlled by medications (Limousin, although the specific mechanisms underlying its therapeutic effects are still debated. PD patients treated with DBS of the STN
Comparative Genomics of Multiple Strains of Pseudomonas cannabina pv. alisalensis, a Potential Model Pathogen of Both Monocots and Dicots

Comparative genomics of closely related pathogens that differ in host range can provide insights into mechanisms of host-pathogen interactions and host adaptation. Furthermore, sequencing of multiple strains with the same host range reveals information concerning pathogen diversity and the molecular basis of virulence. Here we present a comparative analysis of draft genome sequences for four strains of Pseudomonas cannabina pathovar alisalensis (Pcal), which is pathogenic on a range of monocotyledonous and dicotyledonous plants. These draft genome sequences provide a foundation for understanding host range evolution across the monocot-dicot divide. Like other phytopathogenic pseudomonads, Pcal strains harboured a hrp/hrc gene cluster that codes for a type III secretion system. Phylogenetic analysis based on the hrp/hrc cluster genes/proteins, suggests localized recombination and functional divergence within the hrp/hrc cluster. Despite significant conservation of overall genetic content across Pcal genomes, comparison of type III effector repertoires reinforced previous molecular data suggesting the existence of two distinct lineages within this pathovar. Furthermore, all Pcal strains analyzed harbored two distinct genomic islands predicted to code for type VI secretion systems (T6SSs). While one of these systems was orthologous to known P. syringae T6SSs, the other more closely resembled a T6SS found within P. aeruginosa. In summary, our study provides a foundation to unravel Pcal adaptation to both monocot and dicot hosts and provides genetic insights into the mechanisms underlying pathogenicity.
Pathway Regulation of p63, a Director of Epithelial Cell Fate

The p53-related gene p63 is required for epithelial cell establishment and its expression is often altered in tumor cells. Great strides have been made in understanding the pathways and mechanisms that regulate p63 levels, such as the Wnt, Hedgehog, Notch, and EGFR pathways. We discuss here the multiple signaling pathways that control p63 expression as well as transcription factors and post-transcriptional mechanisms that regulate p63 levels. While a unified picture has not emerged, it is clear that the fine-tuning of p63 has evolved to carefully control epithelial cell differentiation and fate.
Enhanced cooperative coding for relay-based MIMO-OFDM systems

In this paper, we propose a 2 × 2 cooperative multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) scheme based on Alamouti space-time coding. In this scheme, the the relay and the destination antennas receive the transmitted symbols from the source during the first stage. Then, both the relay and the destination generate their own decision variables using an Alamouti decoding procedure by the end of the first stage. In the second stage, the relay sends its own decision variables to the destination to enhance the destination decision variables and therefore improves the performance of the system. Our results show the superiority of the proposed cooperative Alamouti scheme by improving the system performance in terms of average BER, frame error rate (FER), and spectral efficiency.