Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Matrix-Bound PAI-1 Supports Cell Blebbing via RhoA/ROCK1 Signaling

The microenvironment of a tumor can influence both the morphology and the behavior of cancer cells which, in turn, can rapidly adapt to environmental changes. Increasing evidence points to the involvement of amoeboid cell migration and thus of cell blebbing in the metastatic process; however, the cues that promote amoeboid cell behavior in physiological and pathological conditions have not yet been clearly identified. Plasminogen Activator Inhibitor type-1 (PAI-1) is found in high amount in the microenvironment of aggressive tumors and is considered as an independent marker of bad prognosis. Here we show by immunoblotting, activity assay and immunofluorescence that, in SW620 human colorectal cancer cells, matrix-associated PAI-1 plays a role in the cell behavior needed for amoeboid migration by maintaining cell blebbing, localizing PDK1 and ROCK1 at the cell membrane and maintaining the RhoA/ROCK1/MLC-P pathway activation. The results obtained by modeling PAI-1 deposition around tumors indicate that matrix-bound PAI-1 is heterogeneously distributed at the tumor periphery and that, at certain spots, the elevated concentrations of matrix-bound PAI-1 needed for cancer cells to undergo the mesenchymal-amoeboid transition can be observed. Matrix-bound PAI-1, as a matricellular protein, could thus represent one of the physiopathological requirements to support metastatic formation.
The laminar pattern of connections between prefrontal and anterior temporal cortices in the Rhesus monkey is related to cortical structure and function.

The laminar pattern of axonal termination from prefrontal (caudal orbitofrontal, rostral orbitofrontal and lateral areas) to anterior temporal areas (entorhinal cortex, perirhinal cortex and area TE) and from temporal to prefrontal areas was investigated with the aid of anterograde tracers. Both regions are characterized by structural heterogeneity, and include agranular, dysgranular and granular cortical types, denoting, respectively, the absence, incipience and presence of granular layer 4. In addition, both the prefrontal and anterior temporal cortices are composed of areas that have related though specialized functions. The pattern of cortical axonal termination was associated with both the structural type of the cortex of origin and the structure of the destination cortex. Thus, efferent fibers from a single origin in either prefrontal or anterior temporal cortex terminated in different patterns depending on their target area. Conversely, axons terminated in different patterns in a single target area, prefrontal or anterior temporal, depending on their area of origin. Projections from agranular or dysgranular type cortices (e.g. medial temporal areas and caudal orbitofrontal areas) terminated mostly in the upper layers of granular cortices (e.g. area TE and lateral prefrontal areas), and projections from granular cortices terminated mostly in the deep layers of agranular or dys- granular cortices. A robust projection from dysgranular orbitofrontal areas terminated in the deep layers of the agranular entorhinal cortex. Projections from prefrontal areas to area TE terminated in the upper layers, and may facilitate focused attention on behaviorally relevant stimuli processed through reciprocal pathways between prefrontal and temporal cortices.
TAXUS I: Six- and Twelve-Month Results From a Randomized, Double-Blind Trial on a Slow-Release Paclitaxel-Eluting Stent for De Novo Coronary Lesions

Background—The TAXUS NIRx stent (Boston Scientific Corp) provides local delivery of paclitaxel via a slow-release polymer coating. The TAXUS I trial was the first in-human experience evaluating safety and feasibility of the TAXUS NIRx stent system compared with bare NIR stents (control) (Boston Scientific Corp) for treatment of coronary lesions. Methods and Results—The TAXUS I trial was a prospective, double-blind, three-center study randomizing 61 patients with de novo or restenotic lesions (≤12 mm) to receive a TAXUS (n=31) versus control (n=30) stent (diameter 3.0 or 3.5 mm). Demographics, lesion characteristics, clinical outcomes were comparable between the groups. The 30-day major adverse cardiac event (MACE) rate was 0% in both groups (P =NS). No stent thromboses were reported at 1, 6, 9, or 12 months. At 12 months, the MACE rate was 3% (1 event) in the TAXUS group and 10% (4 events in 3 patients) in the control group (P =NS). Six-month angiographic restenosis rates were 0% for TAXUS versus 10% for control (P =NS) patients. There were significant improvements in minimal lumen diameter (2.60±0.49 versus 2.19±0.65 mm), diameter stenosis (13.56±11.77 versus 27.23±16.69), and late lumen loss (0.36±0.48 versus 0.71±0.48 mm) in the TAXUS group (all P <0.01). No evidence of edge restenosis was seen in either group. Intravascular ultrasound analysis showed significant improvements in normalized neointimal hyperplasia in the TAXUS (14.8 mm3) group compared with the control group (21.6 mm3) (P <0.05). Conclusions—In this feasibility trial, the TAXUS slow-release stent was well tolerated and showed promise for treatment of coronary lesions, with significant reductions in angiographic and intravascular ultrasound measures of restenosis.
Environmental Transmission of the Gut Symbiont Burkholderia to Phloem-Feeding Blissus insularis

The plant-phloem-feeding Blissus insularis possesses specialized midgut crypts, which harbor a dense population of the exocellular bacterial symbiont Burkholderia. Most individual B. insularis harbor a single Burkholderia ribotype in their midgut crypts; however, a diverse Burkholderia community exists within a host population. To understand the mechanism underlying the consistent occurrence of various Burkholderia in B. insularis and their specific association, we investigated potential gut symbiont transmission routes. PCR amplification detected a low titer of Burkholderia in adult reproductive tracts; however, fluorescence in situ hybridization assays failed to produce detectable signals in these tracts. Furthermore, no Burkholderia-specific PCR signals were detected in eggs and neonates, suggesting that it is unlikely that B. insularis prenatally transmits gut symbionts via ovarioles. In rearing experiments, most nymphs reared on St. Augustinegrass treated with cultured Burkholderia harbored the cultured Burkholderia strains. Burkholderia was detected in the untreated host grass of B. insularis, and most nymphs reared on untreated grass harbored a Burkholderia ribotype that was closely related to a plant-associated Burkholderia strain. These findings revealed that B. insularis neonates acquired Burkholderia primarily from the environment (i.e., plants and soils), even though the possibility of acquisition via egg surface cannot be excluded. In addition, our study explains how the diverse Burkholderia symbiont community in B. insularis populations can be maintained.
THE INFLUENCES OF SCHOOL TYPE AND SOCIAL CONTROL PROCESSES ON JUVENILE DELINQUENCY

Danielle Kuhl, Advisor This study incorporates a multidimensional theoretical framework (stemming from Coleman and Hirschi) in order to analyze the effects varying educational structures have on adolescent delinquent behavior. A nationally representative sample of United States youth, Add Health, is used to examine how school type exerts social control to influence self-reported delinquency. This study finds that private school students report the lower levels of delinquency than parochial school students and public school students. Specifically, analyses show that even after “selecting into” different types of schools, factors associated with the school, both at the structural and individual/social level, continue to matter. Future research in this domain should focus on school characteristics and peer networks in relation to adolescent delinquency. Policy implications should reallocate funds away from disciplinary policies, such as zero tolerance and move towards practices that will increase adolescents’ attachment and legitimate involvement
Polymorphisms in C-Reactive Protein and Glypican-5 Are Associated with Lung Cancer Risk and Gartrokine-1 Influences Cisplatin-Based Chemotherapy Response in a Chinese Han Population

The role of genetics in progression of cancer is an established fact, and susceptibility risk and difference in outcome to chemotherapy may be caused by the variation in low-penetrance alleles of risk genes. We selected seven genes (CRP, GPC5, ACTA2, AGPHD1, SEC14L5, RBMS3, and GKN1) that previously reported link to lung cancer (LC) and genotyped single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) of these genes in a case-control study. A protective allele “C” was found in rs2808630 of the C-reactive protein (CRP). Model association analysis found genotypes “T/C” and “C/C” in the dominant model and genotype “T/C” in the overdominant model of rs2808630 associated with reduced LC risk. Gender-specific analysis in each model showed that genotypes “T/T” and “C/C” in rs2352028 of the Glypican 5 (GPC5) were associated with increased LC risk in males. Logistic regression analysis showed “C/T” genotype carriers of rs4254535 in the Gastrokine 1 (GKN1) had less likelihood to have chemotherapy response. Our results suggest a potential association between CRP and GPC5 variants with LC risk; variation in GKN1 is associated with chemotherapy response in the Chinese Han population.
Batons and Babies: A Qualitative Phenomenological Study of Mothers Who Are Band Directors.

I do not remember when it was that I decided I would like to be a mother. While in elementary school, I decided that I would like to become a teacher, and in the sixth grade, I began to play the flute in our elementary school band. My director, Mrs. Spencer, was also a flutist and helped me pry open the door to music one shaky whole note at a time. I did not realize at the time what an unusual thing it was to have a female band director. After that year, Mrs. Spencer accepted a job a few hours away. We were getting a new band director named Mr. Lane. I was just miserable. Mrs. Spencer thought I was special! She had chosen me to play a solo for Solo and Ensemble Contest, and you have to be invited to play a solo in the sixth grade! In spite of myself, I remember that it took no time at all for Mr. Lane to gain my complete confidence. To this day, I can remember the way he would smile and greet us by name with great enthusiasm and a pat on the back. I worked very hard through my junior high years, and band became my priority. I loved learning how to play all of the music, competing against other junior high bands and competing against other flutists. Nobody was very surprised when I began to talk about being a band director someday. No one said, “That’s a man’s job! ” or “Wouldn’t you rather teach elementary music? ” While I usually attribute my initial desire to teach band to Mr. Lane, Mrs. Spencer has a place of honor in my heart. With the exception of one honor band conductor, she was the only female band director I would ever have. I do not remember much about the way she taught, but I am glad that she was my teacher because I suppose that is how I knew that it was okay for a woman to become a band director. When I graduated from high school, I began to study music education. My goal was to become a middle school band director. This story is not so uncommon. Some girls love band and decide to become band directors. Some girls love family and children and decide to become mothers. Some of us do both. The concept for this research was born just over seven years ago when I, a band director, became a mother. Venturing into an overloaded lifestyle for which I had little model or guidance, I dealt with the demands of balancing motherhood with band directing in a variety of ways. At first, I left band directing and taught elementary music, and at one point, I left the profession for a year. However, I am most comfortable in the role of “band director,” and when I re-entered the band directing profession, I was the mother of a four-year-old daughter and two-year-old son. There were scheduling challenges compounded by the fact that my husband and I were both band
Hotelling ' s Rule in the limit : an agent-based exploration of the model space

Hotelling's Rule is the observation that the exploitation of a nonrenewable resource can only be economically e cient if the resource owner's marginal pro t increases at the prevailing discount rate. This has been a perennial topic in the literature of resource economics since the 1970s, with some authors extending the theory and others analyzing empirical data. This paper reports on the results from using agent-based modeling to assess the consequences of relaxing the optimality constraint to explore the ways in which the outcome space converges on Hotelling's Rule in the limit. The agent-based model (ABM) in this paper has one choice variable: increase, decrease, or maintain the current production level based on one rule: choose the change in production level that maximizes estimated discounted pro t. The results, based on a costless technology and a stylized demand function from Hotelling, indicate that total discounted pro t has low sensitivity to deviations from the optimum. In extending the basic Hotelling model to stylized production technologies with cost, the simple ABM falls short of the optimum by as much as ten percent, depending on the magnitude and whether the cost is xed, marginal, or based on the resource stock level. The optimization errors of the ABM are similar to the errors of a human production planner with incomplete information. The ABM also exhibits emergent collusion-like and Cournot-like behaviors when extended to a small oligopoly market. (JEL Q32)
SNPflow: A Lightweight Application for the Processing, Storing and Automatic Quality Checking of Genotyping Assays

Single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) play a prominent role in modern genetics. Current genotyping technologies such as Sequenom iPLEX, ABI TaqMan and KBioscience KASPar made the genotyping of huge SNP sets in large populations straightforward and allow the generation of hundreds of thousands of genotypes even in medium sized labs. While data generation is straightforward, the subsequent data conversion, storage and quality control steps are time-consuming, error-prone and require extensive bioinformatic support. In order to ease this tedious process, we developed SNPflow. SNPflow is a lightweight, intuitive and easily deployable application, which processes genotype data from Sequenom MassARRAY (iPLEX) and ABI 7900HT (TaqMan, KASPar) systems and is extendible to other genotyping methods as well. SNPflow automatically converts the raw output files to ready-to-use genotype lists, calculates all standard quality control values such as call rate, expected and real amount of replicates, minor allele frequency, absolute number of discordant replicates, discordance rate and the p-value of the HWE test, checks the plausibility of the observed genotype frequencies by comparing them to HapMap/1000-Genomes, provides a module for the processing of SNPs, which allow sex determination for DNA quality control purposes and, finally, stores all data in a relational database. SNPflow runs on all common operating systems and comes as both stand-alone version and multi-user version for laboratory-wide use. The software, a user manual, screenshots and a screencast illustrating the main features are available at http://genepi-snpflow.i-med.ac. at.
Distributed detection in the presence of frequency offset and phase shift

In this paper, we study the problem of distributed detection in the presence of unknown carrier frequency offset (CFO) and initial phase, the issue we encounter in the emerging applications of wireless sensor networks (WSNs) due to hardware constraints on sensor nodes. Suboptimal fusion rules taking into account CFO and initial phase and non-data-aided methods of low complexity for CFO and initial phase shift estimation are developed. Instead of the estimation performance, the objective function is in terms of the final detection performance. In particular, a generalized likelihood ratio test is proposed first for distributed detection in the presence of unknown CFOs and phase shifts. Then computationally simplified algorithms are proposed under the high and low signal-to-noise ratio regimes, respectively. Specifically, under the high-SNR condition, a time-averaging autocorrelator is used for CFO estimation and the Chair-Varshney fusion rule is used for decision fusion; while under the low-SNR condition, maximum likelihood estimation can be realized by a fast Fourier transform. The simulation results show that the developed fusion schemes are robust to CFO and initial phase.
Calcium Sparks: Release Packets of Uncertain Origin and Fundamental Role

Ca2+ sparks have intrigued researchers since their discovery (Cheng et al., 1993). No one anticipated their existence; therefore, they must be telling us something we did not know. Also appealing are the esthetics of a sharp rise in local Ca2+, extremely limited in space and time but large compared with the recording noise.
Quantitative Implications Suppression? A Mathematical Analysis of Its Three-Cell Interactions in T Cell-Mediated

Aiming to further our understanding of T cell-mediated suppression, we investigate the plausibility of the hypothesis that regulatory T cells suppress other T cells (target cells), while both cells are conjugated with one APC. We use a mathematical model to analyze the proliferation inhibition scored during in vitro suppression assays. This model is a radical simpliﬁcation of cell culture reality, assuming that thymidine incorporation is proportional to the number of target cells that would instantaneously form conjugates with APCs that are free of regulatory cells. According to this model the inhibition index should be mainly determined by the number of regulatory cells per APC and should be insensitive to the number of target cells. We reanalyzed several published data sets, conﬁrming this expectation. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the instantaneous inhibition index has an absolute limit as a function of the number of regulatory cells per APC. By calculating this limit we ﬁnd that the model can explain the data under two non-mutually exclusive conditions. First, only ; 15% of APCs used in the suppression assays form conjugates with T cells. Second, the growth of the regulatory cell population depends on the target cells, such that the number of regulatory cells per APC increases when they are cocultured with target cells and overcomes its limit. However, if neither of these testable conditions is fulﬁlled, then one could conclude that suppression in vitro does not require the formation of multicellular conjugates. The Journal of Immunology, 2001, 166: 5356–5365.
Mobile Device-to-Device Video Distribution

As video traffic has dominated the data flow of smartphones, traditional cellular communications face substantial transmission challenges. In this work, we study mobile device-to-device (D2D) video distribution that leverages the storage and communication capacities of smartphones. In such a mobile distributed framework, D2D communication represents an opportunistic process to selectively store and transmit local videos to meet the future demand of others. The performance is measured by the service time, which denotes the elapsed period for fulfilling the demand, and the corresponding implementation of each device depends on the video’s demand, availability, and size. The main contributions of this work lie in (1) considering the impact of video size in a practical mobile D2D video distribution scenario and proposing a general global estimation of the video distribution based on limited and local observations; (2) designing a purely distributed D2D video distribution scheme without the monitoring of any central controller; and (3) providing a practical implementation of the scheme, which does not need to know the video availability, user demand, and device mobility. Numerical results have demonstrated the efficiency and robustness of the proposed scheme.
Utilitarian and emotion-related components of moral judgement: Gender and age effects and the relationship with prosocial and hostile roles in bullying

Abstract This study investigated the utilitarian and emotion-related components of morality, both as a function of gender and age and in relation to hostile vs. pro-social behaviors in bullying. We presented 45 primary and 62 middle school students with different types of moral and control dilemmas to assess their acceptance of utilitarian behaviors that did or did not violate moral norms (with high or low emotional involvement) in relation to their propensity to assume hostile and/or pro-social roles. We found greater acceptance of utilitarian solutions to dilemmas in boys, older children and those inclined to take on hostile roles. An inverse association was found between utilitarian styles and pro-social roles, particularly when utilitarian thinking violated a moral norm with high emotional involvement. We discuss these results in terms of different functioning styles in typically developing children.
The Penefit of Salience: Salient Accented, but Not Unaccented Words Reveal Accent Adaptation Effects

In two eye-tracking experiments, the effects of salience in accent training and speech accentedness on spoken-word recognition were investigated. Salience was expected to increase a stimulus' prominence and therefore promote learning. A training-test paradigm was used on native German participants utilizing an artificial German accent. Salience was elicited by two different criteria: production and listening training as a subjective criterion and accented (Experiment 1) and canonical test words (Experiment 2) as an objective criterion. During training in Experiment 1, participants either read single German words out loud and deliberately devoiced initial voiced stop consonants (e.g., Balken—“beam” pronounced as *Palken), or they listened to pre-recorded words with the same accent. In a subsequent eye-tracking experiment, looks to auditorily presented target words with the accent were analyzed. Participants from both training conditions fixated accented target words more often than a control group without training. Training was identical in Experiment 2, but during test, canonical German words that overlapped in onset with the accented words from training were presented as target words (e.g., Palme—“palm tree” overlapped in onset with the training word *Palken) rather than accented words. This time, no training effect was observed; recognition of canonical word forms was not affected by having learned the accent. Therefore, accent learning was only visible when the accented test tokens in Experiment 1, which were not included in the test of Experiment 2, possessed sufficient salience based on the objective criterion “accent. ” These effects were not modified by the subjective criterion of salience from the training modality.
Cellular Networks: Transient State Models

In the article, a part of a cellular mobile communication system is modelled by a queue-ing network of G=G=N=N stations representing each cell; the network has hexagonal structure, i.e. each G=G=N=N station is connected with six other stations. A method of diiusion approximation is used to study transient state probabilities in this model and to investigate time-dependent performances of the network. Diiusion approximation allows us to consider a large number of cells, any possible cell capacity and, unlike simulation, to obtain results even in cases where loss probabilities are very small.