Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Reversion of human glioblastoma malignancy by U1 small nuclear RNA/ribozyme targeting of scatter factor/hepatocyte growth factor and c-met expression.

BACKGROUND Expression of scatter factor (SF), also known as hepatocyte growth factor (HGF), and its receptor, c-met, is often associated with malignant progression of human tumors, including gliomas. Overexpression of SF/HGF in experimental gliomas enhances tumorigenicity and tumor-associated angiogenesis (i.e., growth of new blood vessels). However, the role of endogenous SF/HGF or c-met expression in the malignant progression of gliomas has not been examined directly. In this study, we tested the hypothesis that human glioblastomas can be SF/HGF-c-met dependent and that a reduction in endogenous SF/HGF or c-met expression can lead to inhibition of tumor growth and tumorigenicity. METHODS Expression of the SF/HGF and c-met genes was inhibited by transfecting glioblastoma cells with chimeric transgenes consisting of U1 small nuclear RNA, a hammerhead ribozyme, and antisense sequences. The effects of reduced SF/HGF and c-met expression on 1) SF/HGF-dependent induction of immediate early genes (c-fos and c-jun), indicative of signal transduction; 2) anchorage-independent colony formation (clonogenicity), an in vitro correlate of solid tumor malignancy; and 3) intracranial tumor formation in immunodeficient mice were quantified. Statistical tests were two-sided. RESULTS Introduction of the transgenes into glioblastoma cells reduced expression of the SF/HGF and c-met genes to as little as 2% of control cell levels. Reduction in c-met expression specifically inhibited SF/HGF-dependent signal transduction (P<.01). Inhibition of SF/HGF or c-met expression in glioblastoma cells possessing an SF/HGF-c-met autocrine loop reduced tumor cell clonogenicity (P =.005 for SF/HGF and P=.009 for c-met) and substantially inhibited tumorigenicity (P<.0001) and tumor growth in vivo (P<.0001). CONCLUSIONS To our knowledge, this is the first successful inhibition of SF/HGF and c-met expression in a tumor model directly demonstrating a role for endogenous SF/HGF and c-met in human glioblastoma. Our results suggest that targeting the SF/HGF-c-met signaling pathway may be an important approach in controlling tumor progression.
Cochlear Implant Rate Pitch and Melody Perception as a Function of Place and Number of Electrodes

Six Nucleus cochlear implant recipients participated in a study investigating the effect of place of stimulation on melody perception using rate-pitch cues. Each stimulus was a pulse train delivered on either a single electrode or multiple electrodes sequentially. Four spatial stimulation patterns were used: a single apical electrode, a single mid electrode, a pair of electrodes (apical and mid), and 11 electrodes (from apical to mid). Within one block of trials, all stimuli had the same spatial stimulation pattern, with pulse rate varying from 131 to 262 pps. An additional pulse rate range of 262 to 523 pps was tested with the single-electrode stimuli. Two experimental procedures were used: note ranking; and a modified melodies test with backwards and warp modification. In each trial of the modified melodies test, a familiar melody and a version with modified pitch were presented (in random order), and the subject’s task was to select the unmodified melody. There were no significant differences in performance for stimulation on 1, 2, or 11 electrodes, implying that recipients were unable to combine temporal information from different places in the cochlea to give a stronger pitch cue. No advantage of apical electrodes was found: at the lower pulse rates, there were no significant differences between electrodes; and at the higher pulse rates, scores on the apical electrode dropped more than those on the mid electrode.
Tracking Yukon-Tanana Terrane VMS Host Stratigraphy and Intrusion-Related Gold in the Southern Sylvester Allochthon ( Beale Lake Map Area , 104 I / 14 N )

This report describes a new mapping project in the Cassiar Mountains, located 70 kilometres northeast of Dease Lake in northern British Columbia. The area is attractive for two reasons. First, it contains rocks that are likely correlative with those of the Yukon-Tanana Terrane, a tract with known volcanogenic massive sulphide potential. Second, combined geological and regional geochemical data suggest possible intrusion-related gold mineralization within it.
On ML estimation for automatic RSS-based indoor localization

We consider the problem of RSS-based indoor localization with Maximum Likelihood (ML) estimation techniques in low-cost Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN). In the perspective of fully automated methods, we consider the problem of channel and position estimation as coupled problems. We compare via simulations the approaches of separate and joint ML estimation, plus a third method based on multi-lateration. We find that channel estimation via simple linear regression combined with ML localization has the potential to achieve good accuracy while keeping a very low level of computational and implementation complexity. We also find that in 3D localization the vertical error on the z-axis is considerably larger than the horizontal error on the xy-plane. This is due to the limited vertical offset that can be imposed to anchor beacons in “flat” buildings where the height is considerably smaller than the horizontal dimensions.
Alignment-free detection of local similarity among viral and bacterial genomes

MOTIVATION Bacterial and viral genomes are often affected by horizontal gene transfer observable as abrupt switching in local homology. In addition to the resulting mosaic genome structure, they frequently contain regions not found in close relatives, which may play a role in virulence mechanisms. Due to this connection to medical microbiology, there are numerous methods available to detect horizontal gene transfer. However, these are usually aimed at individual genes and viral genomes rather than the much larger bacterial genomes. Here, we propose an efficient alignment-free approach to describe the mosaic structure of viral and bacterial genomes, including their unique regions. RESULTS Our method is based on the lengths of exact matches between pairs of sequences. Long matches indicate close homology, short matches more distant homology or none at all. These exact match lengths can be looked up efficiently using an enhanced suffix array. Our program implementing this approach, alfy (ALignment-Free local homologY), efficiently and accurately detects the recombination break points in simulated DNA sequences and among recombinant HIV-1 strains. We also apply alfy to Escherichia coli genomes where we detect new evidence for the hypothesis that strains pathogenic in poultry can infect humans. AVAILABILITY alfy is written in standard C and its source code is available under the GNU General Public License from http://guanine.evolbio. mpg.de/alfy/. The software package also includes documentation and example data.
Merits and Pitfalls of Currently Used Diagnostic Tools in Mycetoma

Treatment of mycetoma depends on the causative organism and since many organisms, both actinomycetes (actinomycetoma) and fungi (eumycetoma), are capable of producing mycetoma, an accurate diagnosis is crucial. Currently, multiple diagnostic tools are used to determine the extent of infections and to identify the causative agents of mycetoma. These include various imaging, cytological, histopathological, serological, and culture techniques; phenotypic characterisation; and molecular diagnostics. In this review, we summarize these techniques and identify their merits and pitfalls in the identification of the causative agents of mycetoma and the extent of the disease. We also emphasize the fact that there is no ideal diagnostic tool available to identify the causative agents and that future research should focus on the development of new and reliable diagnostic tools.
An Adaptive Scheme for Overload Handling in Active Data Warehouses

This paper presents a novel adaptive approach for scheduling updates in a data warehouse that processes “near real-time” data streams. Data is pushed to the warehouse fro m a variety of external sources with a wide range of inter-arrival times (e.g., once a minute to once a day). Due to network conditions , the volume of incoming data can widely vary and data streams can experience intermittent outages. Maintaining data freshness in the presence of outages and load variations can be challen gi g. In prior work, ad hoc heuristic algorithms have been proposed for doing this. In this paper, a systematic approach based upon g lobal multiprocessor real-time scheduling theory is considered . The proposed approach can handle overload and recovery situati ons and maintain guarantees on data freshness for warehouse tab les that are not impacted by outages. Simulation experiments ar e presented that show the effectiveness of the proposed appro ach.
Parkinson’s Disease with Impulse Control Disorders: Higher Prevalence (Frequency) of Symptoms of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder

Parkinson’s Disease (PD) and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) are both characterized by dysexecutive symptoms and attentional difficulties related to basal ganglia networks’ dysfunction. Moreover, a small proportion of patients with PD suffer from Impulse Control Disorders (ICDs), which share motor and impulsivity symptoms with ADHD. Recent studies reported a link between ADHD and neurodegenerative disorders such as Lewy Bodies dementia. Thus, the aim of our study was to explore the prevalence of ADHD and ADHD symptoms in PD patients and to compare ADHD prevalence in PD patients with and without comorbid ICDs. Methods: We administered the Diagnostic Interview for ADHD in Adults (DIVA 2.0) to 86 PD patients with and without comorbid ICDs. The PD diagnosis was based on Gelb’s criteria while the presence of ICDs was defined according the Questionnaire for Impulsive-Compulsive Disorders in Parkinson's Disease-Rating Scale scores. Results: We found adult ADHD in thirty three out of 86 patients (38.37%). Importantly, the frequency of adult ADHD and ADHD symptoms was higher in the PD+ICDs group respect to the PD group (52.17% of PD+ICDs versus 22.5% of PD patients). Inattentive symptoms resulted higher in people with PD+ICDs in respect to those with PD only, in both childhood and adulthood (14% versus 2.5% for adult inattention and 23.8% versus 10% for childhood inattention, respectively). Conclusion: The unexpected high rate of adult ADHD in PD patients and especially in those with PD+ICDs points out the importance to consider the screening for ADHD in the PD population. To the best of our knowledge, our study is the first investigating the occurrence of ADHD in patients with PD+ICDs. Further studies using validated diagnostic tools for assessing ADHD in this population are warranted to replicate our findings.
Mining microdata: Economic opportunity and spatial mobility in Britain and the United States, 1850–1881

For almost two centuries social theorists have argued that the fundamental difference in social structure between Europe and North America arises from greater economic and geographic mobility in North America. We study social mobility in three countries across two generations using machine learning techniques to create panels of individuals linked between censuses thirty years apart (1850-1880, 1880-1910). This paper reports on a preliminary analysis of social mobility between 1850 and 1880, finding that mobility was markedly higher in the United States and Canada, compared to Great Britain.
The Timing of Intergenerational Transfers, Tax Policy, and Aggregate Savings

We analyze the interest rate and savings effects of fiscal policy in an overlapping generations framework that accommodates two observations: (1) The interest rate on consumption loans exceeds the rate of return to household savings. (2) Private intergenerational transfers are widespread and primarily occur early in the lifecycle of recipients. The wedge between borrowing and lending rates in our model arises from the asymmetric tax treatment of interest income and interest payments. Intergenerational transfers are altruistically motivated. Under the assumption that altruistic transfers occur in at least some family lines and other plausible conditions, we prove the invariance of capital's steady-state marginal product to government expenditures, government debt, the labor income tax schedule, and the tax rate on capital income. In contrast, we find that the tax treatment of interest payments has powerful effects on capitals? marginal product and aggregate savings in life-cycle and, especially, altruistic linkage models. Our theoretical analysis also generates new testable implications for empirical work on how tax policy effects aggregate savings and on the connection between the age distribution of resources and the age distribution of consumption. Simulations of our model suggest that the 1986 Tax Reform Act's elimination of interest deductibility on consumer loan repayments will significantly increase per capita savings.
Antioxidant Activities and Tyrosinase Inhibitory Effects of Different Extracts from Pleurotus ostreatus Fruiting Bodies

We evaluated the antioxidant activity and tyrosinase inhibitory effects of Pleurotus ostreatus fruiting bodies extracted with acetone, methanol, and hot water. The antioxidant activities were tested against β-carotene-linoleic acid, reducing power, 1,1-diphenyl-2-picrylhydrazyl free radical scavenging activity, and ferrous chelating ability. Furthermore, phenolic acid and flavonoid contents were also analyzed. The methanol extract showed the strongest β-carotene-linoleic acid inhibition as compared to the other exracts. The acetone extract (8 mg/mL) showed a significantly high reducing power of 1.54 than the other extracts. The acetone extract was more effective than other extracts for scavenging on 1,1-diphenyl-2-picrylhydrazyl radicals. The strongest chelating effect (85.66%) was obtained from the acetone extract at 1.0 mg/mL. The antioxidant activities of the extracts from the P. ostreatus fruiting bodies increased with increasing concentration. A high performance liquid chromatography analysis detected seven phenolic compounds, including gallic acid, protocatechuic acid, chlorogenic acid, naringenin, hesperetin, formononetin, and biochanin-A in an acetonitrile and 0.1 N hydrochloric acid (5 : 1) solvent extract. The total phenolic compound concentration was 188 μg/g. Tyrosinase inhibition of the acetone, methanol, and hot water P. ostreatus extracts increased with increasing concentration. The results revealed that the methanol extract had good tyrosinase inhibitory ability, whereas the acetone and hot water extracts showed moderate activity at the concentrations tested. The results suggested that P. ostreatus may have potential as a natural antioxidant.
Sex Specific Differences in GABA and Glutamate Levels in Response to Cigarette Smoke

Cigarette smoking act differently in men and women. Nicotine is the main psychoactive substance of tobacco and affects several neurological pathways through nicotinic acetylcholine receptors (nAChRs). Addiction to nicotine is developed by dopaminergic system with the involvement of GABAergic and glutamatergic systems. In the present study we have measured the circulating GABA and glutamate in smokers and non-smokers men and compared them with women. Our results showed that GABA levels are significantly less in men than women with greater difference among smokers. No difference was found in glutamate levels in men and women.
An efficient way of detecting memory errors in JPEG2000

The quick expansion of image compression has immensely increased to decline memory capacity without reducing the clarity of an image. This paper relates memory compensation errors in JPEG2000 for reducing memory size. Moreover, we use various compensation techniques such as Discrete Wavelet Transform to mollify memory utilization and recommend Entropy coding algorithm, MQ-Coding for tailoring memory errors. The Entropy coder can be recycled to diminish and store enormous chunk of data in a memory. These systems do not prefer any supplementary memory can lessen the memory condition having the fewer computation complexity with larger size and more power consumption. The proposed architecture is to adopt Set Partitioning in Hierarchical Trees in augmentation with Discrete Wavelet Transform which is used to increase the image quality along with the compression ratio. By this technique, memory miscalculation can be neglected. The image quality can be lifted. It lessens the coefficient value and boosts the quality of the image.
Canonical Correlation Analysis: A Step-by-Step Example in Commonly Available Software

Canonical Correlation Analysis (CCA) can be conceptualized as a multivariate regression involving multiple outcome variables. CCA compares two sets of variables and is the second-most general application of the General Linear Model (GLM) following Structural Equation Modeling. Structural Equation Modeling software have made conducting CCA feasible for researchers in numerous and disparate disciplines. SPSS and AMOS are two commonly used statistical software packages and both can conduct CCAs. AMOS is particularly useful because it enables statistical significance testing of individual canonical correlations. This article provides background knowledge of CCA as part of the GLM and provides step-by-step instructions for conducting a CCA in AMOS. he general linear model (GLM) comprises an overwhelming majority of parametric statistical procedures. Regression is the univariate GLM (Cohen, 1968) and canonical correlation analysis (CCA) is the multivariate GLM (Knapp, 1978). The GLM includes the t-test, ANOVA and other OVA procedures, descriptive discriminate analysis, CCA and structural equation modeling (SEM; Graham, 2008; Henson, 2002; Thompson, 1991; Zientek & Thompson, 2009). SEM is the acme of the hierarchical GLM, subsuming all other procedures in the GLM. CCA is the second-most general application of the GLM (Henson, 2002; Knapp, 1978; Sherry & Henson, 2005; Thompson, 1991). All GLM procedures are defined by the fact that they a) create weights applied to measured variables to construct synthetic variables, b) are correlational and c) provide analogues of the r 2 effect size (Henson,
Threshold setting for the evaluation of the aggregate interference in ISM band in hospital environments

Estimation of the aggregate interference is required in order to predict the performance of a wireless system in its working environment. Body Area Networks (BANs) for healthcare applications are becoming a reality, allowing patients to be monitored continuously without forcing them to stay in bed or in hospital. The increasing number of wireless medical devices makes the ISM (Industrial, Scientific and Medical) band particularly crowded. If new smart BANs have to correctly operate in hospital, coexistence with the existing wireless devices must be accurately investigated, starting with studying the interference in the operating frequency band. The intensity of the interference is strongly related to the chosen threshold, which defines if a received sample has to be categorized as interference or noise. Adaptive threshold methods outperform the non-adaptive ones, due to flexibility and robustness. Among the adaptive threshold methods, the forward consecutive mean excision (FCME) is one of the most attractive, since it is blind, computationally simple and efficient. When applied to large data set, it may require too long time to be computed, thus median filtering has been proposed (med-FCME). In this paper we compare the performance of fixed vs adaptive threshold methods. The two methods are applied to a set of real measurements taken in a modern city hospital over one week.
Extracellularly occurring histone H1 mediates the binding of thyroglobulin to the cell surface of mouse macrophages.

Thyroglobulin is the major secretory protein of thyroid epithelial cells. Part of thyroglobulin reaches the circulation of vertebrates by transcytosis across the epithelial wall of thyroid follicles. Clearance of thyroglobulin from the circulation occurs within the liver via internalization of thyroglobulin by macrophages. Here we have analyzed the interaction of thyroglobulin with the cell surface of J774 macrophages with the aim to identify the possible thyroglobulin-binding sites on macrophages. Binding of thyroglobulin to J774 cells was saturated at approximately 100 nM thyroglobulin with a Kd of 50 nM, and it was competed by the ligand itself. Preincubation of J774 cells with thyroglobulin resulted in downregulation of thyroglobulin-binding sites, indicating internalization of thyroglobulin and its binding proteins. By affinity chromatography, two proteins from J774 cells were identified as thyroglobulin-binding proteins with an apparent molecular mass of approximately 33 kD. Unexpectedly, both proteins were identified as histone H1 by protein sequencing. The occurrence of histone H1 at the plasma membrane was further proven by biotinylation or immunolabeling of J774 cells. The in vitro interaction between histone H1 and thyroglobulin was analyzed by surface plasmon resonance that revealed a Kd at 46 nM. In situ, histone H1 was colocalized to FITC-Tg-containing endocytic compartments of Kupffer cells, i.e., liver macrophages. We conclude that histone H1 is detectable at the cell surface of macrophages where it serves as a thyroglobulin-binding protein and mediates thyroglobulin endocytosis.
The Legacy of Logging—Estimating Arboreal Lichen Occurrence in a Boreal Multiple-Use Landscape on a Two Century Scale

In northern Sweden, the availability of arboreal lichens (Bryoria fuscescens, Alectoria sarmentosa) as winter grazing resources is an important element in reindeer husbandry. With the industrialization of forestry, forests rich in arboreal lichens have diminished considerably. Here, we analyze how forestry has impacted lichen availability from the 1920's to the present day and model its future development assuming different forest management scenarios. We recorded the current occurrence of B. fuscescens in 144 sampling plots, stratified by forest age class and dominant tree species in a 26,600 ha boreal forest landscape that is used for both reindeer herding and forestry. Lichen abundance was visually estimated in four classes: none, sparse, moderate and abundant. A binary logistic model using forest age as the independent variable was developed to predict the probability of lichens being present. Using this model, we found that lichens were present in stands that are at least 63 years old. Because of the relative paucity of stands rich in arboreal lichens, it was not possible to reliably determine how age affects the variation in abundance of older forest stands. The historical development of forests where arboreal lichens could potentially occur was studied using historic forestry records dating back 80 years. Between 1926 and the present day, forestry has reduced the cover of forests older than 60 years from 84% to 34%. The likely future spatial coverage of these stands over the next 120 years was estimated for two different management scenarios and an unmanaged reference scenario, using the Heureka strategic planning program. Under both the “business as usual” scenario and that involving more intensive forestry, continued decreases in lichen availability are projected. Our results emphasize the importance of alternative forestry practices, such as prolonged rotation periods, to increase the availability of arboreal lichens as a grazing resource for reindeer.