Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Specialty Grand Challenge Article Grand Challenges in Cancer Epidemiology and Prevention

Cancer is the second cause of overall mortality in the world (Abegunde et al., 2007), with approximately 12.5 million new cases and 7.5 million deaths each year (Ferlay et al., 2010; Jemal et al., 2011). Many cancers are preventable, and cancer control represents a global challenge which will be significantly aided by increasing our knowledge of distribution, causes, and methods for prevention of cancer. This journal, Frontiers in Cancer Epidemiology and Prevention, is dedicated to publishing papers on the distribution, etiology, and prevention of cancer. In this article, we present our vision for the Journal. We discuss what has been discovered, what lies ahead, and what papers we hope to receive from authors. The overall scope of the Journal is summarized in Figure 1. In the past few decades, cancer registries have produced data on incidence, prevalence , and mortality of cancers in many regions of the world, and shown variations by sex, race, geographic region, and other demographic determinants. Examples include the Surveillance Epidemiology and End Results (SEER) program in the United States (Hayat et al., 2007) and the compilation of cancer registry data within the volumes of Cancer Incidence in Five Continents (Parkin et al., 2010). We now have a reasonably good idea of distribution of cancers in many areas of the world, overall and within specific subgroups of the population. This is a unique and fortunate characteristic of the descriptive epidemiology of cancer, compared to other chronic diseases. However, cancer incidence and mortality rates change; hospitals and cancer registries prepare new reports; and new registries are established. We welcome reports on the incidence, prevalence, and mortality from cancers from all over the world and manuscripts based on original analyses of descriptive data. Whereas by 1950 little was established about etiology of cancer, epidemiologic studies in the past 60 years have helped us know about some major causes of many cancers. One can cite many examples. Groundbreaking case–control studies by Doll and Hill (1950), Wynder and Graham (1950), and Levin et al. (1950) in the early 1950s established smoking as a cause of cancer. In the past two decades, a large number of case–control, cohort, and nested case– control studies showed the strong association between certain types of human papillomavirus (HPV) and cervical cancer, and later cancers of the vulva, vagina, penis, anus, oral cavity, and oropharynx and tonsil (Munoz et al., 2003; Bouvard et al., 2009). The …
Herschel-ATLAS: rapid evolution of dust in galaxies over the last 5 billion years

We present the first direct and unbiased measurement of the evolution of the dust mass function of galaxies over the past 5 billion years of cosmic history using data from the Science Demonstration Phase of the Herschel-Astrophysical Terahertz Large Area Survey (Herschel-ATLAS). The sample consists of galaxies selected at 250 m which have reliable counterparts from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) at z < 0.5, and contains 1867 sources. Dust masses are calculated using both a single-temperature grey-body model for the spectral energy distribution and also a model with multiple temperature components. The dust temperature for either model shows no trend with redshift. Splitting the sample into bins of redshift reveals a strong evolution in the dust properties of the most massive galaxies. At z= 0.4–0.5, massive galaxies had dust masses about five times larger than in the local Universe. At the same time, the dust-to-stellar mass ratio was about three to four times larger, and the optical depth derived from fitting the UV-sub-mm data with an energy balance model was also higher. This increase in the dust content of massive galaxies at high redshift is difficult to explain using standard dust evolution models and requires a rapid gas consumption time-scale together with either a more top-heavy initial mass function (IMF), efficient mantle growth, less dust destruction or combinations of all three. This evolution in dust mass is likely to be associated with a change in overall interstellar medium mass, and points to an enhanced supply of fuel for star formation at earlier cosmic epochs.
Nature inspired Reasoning for the Semantic Web ( NatuReS )

The success of the Semantic Web research is dependent upon the construction of complete and reliable domain ontologies. In this paper we describe an unsupervised framework for domain ontology enrichment based on mining domain text corpora. Specifically, we enrich the hierarchical backbone of an existing ontology, i.e. its taxonomy, with new domain-specific concepts. The framework is based on an extended model of hierarchical self-organizing maps. As being founded on an unsupervised neural network architecture, the framework can be applied to different languages and domains. Terms extracted by mining a text corpus encode contextual content information, in a distributional vector space. The enrichment behaves like a classification of the extracted terms into the existing taxonomy by attaching them as hyponyms for the nodes of the taxonomy. The experiments reported are in the “Lonely Planet” tourism domain. The taxonomy and the corpus are the ones proposed in the PASCAL ontology learning and population challenge. The experimental results prove that the quality of the enrichment is considerably improved by using semantics based vector representations for the classified (newly added) terms, like the document category histograms (DCH) and the document frequency times inverse term frequency (DF-ITF) weighting scheme.
Alterations in Hippocampal Neurogenesis and Pain Behavior in Mice: an Experimental Study

As living condition has been shown to affect rates of neurogenesis, the current study was designed to examine the relationship between neurogenesis and pain behavior, particularly stress-induced analgesia (SIA) and tonic pain. Mice received daily injection stress and were placed in group or isolated housing conditions, with or without access to a running wheel in order to differentially manipulate neurogenesis. Both males and females were used in this study to investigate sex differences involved. Animals were tested with hotplate and tail withdrawal tests before and after restraint stress to examine SIA (experiment 1), and with a subcutaneous formalin injection to assess changes in tonic pain—particularly in the late phase (experiment 2). Group housed runners were expected to have increased neurogenesis, decreased SIA and increased late phase formalin pain; however, findings did not support this hypothesis. In experiment 1, significant differences in overall acute pain were observed, depending on housing and running. In experiment 2, overall formalin pain behavior was influenced by housing, while running differentially influenced pain behaviors in each phase. Significant changes in neurogenesis were not observed, which-along with a number of confounding variables-may have influenced inconsistent findings.
Cyclin-Dependent Kinase 5 Mediates Adult OPC Maturation and Myelin Repair through Modulation of Akt and GsK-3β Signaling

Failure of remyelination in diseases, such as multiple sclerosis (MS), leads to permanent axonal damage and irreversible functional loss. The mechanisms controlling remyelination are currently poorly understood. Recent studies implicate the cyclin-dependent kinase 5 (Cdk5) in regulating oligodendrocyte (OL) development and myelination in CNS. In this study, we show that Cdk5 is also an important regulator of remyelination. Pharmacological inhibition of Cdk5 inhibits repair of lysolecithin lesions. This inhibition is a consequence of Cdk5 disruption in neural cells because remyelination in slice cultures is blocked by Cdk5 inhibitors, whereas specific deletion of Cdk5 in OLs inhibits myelin repair. In CNP-Cre;Cdk5fl/fl conditional knock-out mouse (Cdk5 cKO), myelin repair was delayed significantly in response to focal demyelinating lesions compared with wild-type animals. The lack of myelin repair was reflected in decreased expression of MBP and proteolipid protein and a reduction in the total number of myelinated axons in the lesion. The number of CC1+ cells in the lesion sites was significantly reduced in Cdk5 cKO compared with wild-type animals although the total number of oligodendrocyte lineage cells (Olig2+ cells) was increased, suggesting that Cdk5 loss perturbs the transition of early OL lineage cell into mature OL and subsequent remyelination. The failure of remyelination in Cdk5 cKO animals was associated with a reduction in signaling through the Akt pathway and an enhancement of Gsk-3β signaling pathways. Together, these data suggest that Cdk5 is critical in regulating the transition of adult oligodendrocyte precursor cells to mature OLs that is essential for myelin repair in adult CNS.
Associations of Maternal and Neonatal Serum Trace Element Concentrations with Neonatal Birth Weight

Background Trace elements play important nutritional roles in neonates. Our objective was to examine whether there are differences in maternal/neonatal serum trace element concentrations between mature infants and premature infants. Methods During 2012, 44 infants born at National Center for Global Health and Medicine, Tokyo, Japan, were enrolled. Serum samples were collected to measure serum iron, zinc, copper, and selenium concentrations 5 days after birth. Maternal serum samples were obtained before delivery and cord blood was taken at delivery to measure the same trace elements. We compared the results between term group whose birth weight were ≥2500 g and gestational age were ≥37 weeks and premature group whose birth weight were <2500 g or gestational age were <37 weeks. Variables significantly different between two groups were included in linear regression models to identify significant predictors of birth weight. Values of P<0.05 were considered statistically significant. Results Serum selenium concentrations were lower in premature group than in term group (43.3±7.0 µg/L vs. 52.0±8.9 µg/L, P = 0.001). Maternal serum selenium concentrations were also significantly lower in the mothers of premature group than in the mothers of term group (79.3±19.3 µg/L vs. 94.1±18.1 µg/L, P = 0.032). There were no significant differences in neonatal or maternal iron, zinc, or copper concentrations between two groups. Multivariate linear regression analysis showed that, except for gestational age, only maternal serum selenium was significantly associated with birth weight (P = 0.015). Conclusions Serum selenium concentrations were lower in premature group and their mothers compared with the term group. The maternal serum selenium concentration was positively correlated with birth weight. These results suggest that maternal serum selenium concentration may influence neonatal birth weight.
Neuromodulation for end of life symptoms

The future of neuromodulation shows incredible potential and will likely demonstrate greater integration of various techniques as adjunctive therapy to already accepted standard of care management. Extensive research continues on current applications of neuromodulation such as movement disorders, while new indications are also being investigated. These new indications include depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, impulsivity disorders, addiction, eating disorders, obesity, tinnitus, blood pressure control and traumatic brain injury. In addition, neuromodulation may have a potential role in palliative care medicine. Patients in this sector often suffer from significantly distressing symptoms that have a common basis to some of those pathologies mentioned above. If effective, neuromodulatory techniques could alleviate these symptoms and facilitate a better quality of life for the patient’s remaining time. Here, we discuss the potential roles of neuromodulation by way of deep brain stimulation (DBS), motor cortex stimulation (MCS), spinal cord stimulation (SCS) and peripheral nerve stimulation (PNS). These various modalities are examined for refractory symptoms of dyspnea, gastrointestinal (GI) dysfunction, motor deficits, depression, delirium, mentation and sleep disturbance in palliative care patients. We review discovery of incidental amelioration of symptoms, current knowledge on mechanism of action specific to modality, analysis of results reported in literature, limitations of data, barriers to application and future research. Many of the advances in functional neurosurgery have come from unintended benefits while treating other conditions and we suspect that increasing use of neuromodulation will result in similar findings of relief for other symptoms. It is an exciting time to be involved in neuromodulation as we seek to improve quality at end of life.
Unsupervised Disaggregation of Low Frequency Power Measurements

Fear of increasing prices and concern about climate change are motivating residential power conservation efforts. We investigate the effectiveness of several unsupervised disaggregation methods on low frequency power measurements collected in real homes. Specifically, we consider variants of the factorial hidden Markov model. Our results indicate that a conditional factorial hidden semi-Markov model, which integrates additional features related to when and how appliances are used in the home and more accurately represents the power use of individual appliances, outperforms the other unsupervised disaggregation methods. Our results show that unsupervised techniques can provide perappliance power usage information in a non-invasive manner, which is ideal for enabling power conservation efforts.
Neuronal differentiation of stem cells isolated from adult muscle

Lineage uncommitted pluripotent stem cells reside in the connective tissue of skeletal muscle. The present study was carried out with pluripotent stem cells (PPSCs) isolated from 6‐month old rat muscle. Before differentiation, these cells were vimentin+, CD90+, CD45−, and varied in their expression of CD34. The PPSCs were expanded as non‐adherent aggregates under similar conditions to those used to generate neurospheres from embryonic or neural stem cells. The PPSC‐derived neurospheres were positive for nestin, an early marker present in neuronal precursors, and expressed the two alternative mRNA forms of the neuroectodermal marker Pax‐6, as well as mRNA for Oct‐4, a gene related to the pluripotentiality of stem cells. To confirm their neural potential, PPSC‐derived neurospheres were plated on coated coverslips under varying conditions: Neurobasal medium with N2 or B27, and either NT3 or BDNF. After 4–6 days the cells expressed neuronal (Tuj1+, NF68), astrocytic (GFAP) and oligodendrocytic (MOSP+, MBP+) markers, both by immunocytochemistry and RT‐PCR. In addition, PPSCs were cultured as monolayers under adherent conditions, exposed to growth factors and defined differentiating conditions for 5 hr, and subsequently kept for 2 days in a maturation medium. At this point they gave rise to a mixed population of early neural progenitors (Nestin+ or NG2+), immature and mature neurons (Tuj1+ and NF145+) and myelin producing oligodendrocytes (CNPase + and MOSP+). Our study shows that PPSCs present in adult muscle can overcome germ lineage restrictions and express the molecular characteristics of brain cells. Therefore, PPSCs isolated from adult muscle could provide a novel source for autologous cell replacement in neurodegenerative and demyelinating diseases. © 2002 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Emotional Intelligence and Organizational Effectiveness

What can we do to better attain our own potential? Why don't our workers reach the potential that we see in them? What characteristic most distinguishes effective employees from average workers? What separates organizations that do well from organizations that fail or who simply never seem to grow and develop beyond a limited degree of success? Upon examination of this issue, it is evident that organizational and employee and leader development involves much more than sheer, raw intelligence and hard work. Perhaps there are factors that we are not recognizing and addressing that could have a direct effect on the attainment of potential and effectiveness. Most of us " try harder " and try to think " smarter " , but maybe that isn't enough. Maybe we are missing something important. As an increasing body of research is being developed to address this topic, it is becoming more apparent that other factors, such as the ability to understand and master one's own emotions and to read and respond appropriately to the emotions of others, make up a form of intelligence, that is equally important as that of raw intelligence (Goleman, 1995). This intelligence, referred to as " emotional intelligence " , pertains to the ability to understand emotion and emotional knowledge as well as the ability to regulate emotions to promote educational and intellectual growth (Cooper & Sawaf, 1997). Any effective leader or manager must understand their personal strengths, weaknesses, and even " trigger points " as a leader and as an individual. We use these to understand and work on the results we consistently attain in our work as well as personal lives. For some unknown reason, we have been taught to avoid our emotions and how they affect us. One route to understanding these emotions and employing them effectively in the workplace is through the understasnding of the concept of emotional intelligence. Developing clarity in emotional intelligence and employing the EI principles can considerably improve an employee's communication, ability to share their vision and critical thinking skills (Spencer & Spencer, 1993). Goldman (1998) has suggested that the ability of a leader to influence, she or he must understand and remain grounded in their values, mission, and vision to lead effectively. This grounding allows leadership by the example and presents a model for others. Have no doubt – we are observed and assessed on how we lead and work …
Generative Modeling of Hidden Functional Brain Networks

Functional connectivity refers to the temporal statistical relationship between spatially distinct brain regions and is usually inferred from the time series coherence/correlation in brain activity between regions of interest. In human functional brain networks, the network structure is often inferred from functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) blood oxygen level dependent (BOLD) signal. Since the BOLD signal is a proxy for neuronal activity, it is of interest to learn the latent functional network structure. Additionally, despite a core set of observations about functional networks such as small-worldness, modularity, exponentially truncated degree distributions, and presence of various types of hubs, very little is known about the computational principles which can give rise to these observations. This paper introduces a Hidden Markov Random Field framework for the purpose of representing, estimating, and evaluating latent neuronal functional relationships between different brain regions using fMRI data.
Hippocampal changes in patients with a first episode of major depression.

OBJECTIVE Previous work suggests that patients with unipolar depression may have structural as well as functional abnormalities in limbic-thalamic-cortical networks, which are hypothesized to modulate human mood states. A core area in these networks is the hippocampus. In the present study, differences in volumes of hippocampal gray and white matter between patients with a first episode of major depression and healthy comparison subjects were examined. METHOD Thirty patients with a first episode of major depression and 30 healthy comparison subjects who were matched for age, gender, handedness, and education were examined with high-resolution magnetic resonance imaging. RESULTS Male patients with a first episode of major depression had significantly smaller hippocampal total and gray matter volumes than healthy male comparison subjects. Both male and female patients showed significant alterations of left-right asymmetry and significant reductions of left and right hippocampal white matter fibers in relation to healthy comparison subjects. Hippocampal measurements were not significantly correlated with clinical variables, such as age at onset of illness, illness duration, or severity of depression. CONCLUSIONS These results are consistent with findings of structural abnormalities of the hippocampal formation in patients with major depression that were more pronounced in male patients. The authors' findings support the hypothesis that the hippocampus and its connections within limbic-cortical networks may play a crucial role in the pathogenesis of major depression.
Sensitivity to CPT-11 of xenografted human colorectal cancers as a function of microsatellite instability and p53 status

Biological parameters influencing the response of human colorectal cancers (CRCs) to CPT-11, a topoisomerase 1 (top1) inhibitor, were investigated using a panel of nine CRCs xenografted into nude mice. CRC xenografts differed in their p53 status (wt or mut) and in their microsatellite instability phenotype (MSI+when altered). Five CRC xenografts were established from clinical samples. All five had a functional p53, two were MSI+and three were MSI–. Tumour-bearing nude mice were treated intraperitonealy (i.p.) with CPT-11. At 10 mg kg–1of CPT-11, four injections at 4-day intervals, four of the five xenografts responded to CPT-11 (growth delay of up to 10 days); the non-responder tumour was MSI–. At 40 mg kg–1of CPT-11, six injections at 4-day intervals, the five CRCs displayed variable but marked responses with complete regressions. In order to assess the role of p53 status in CPT-11 response, four CRC lines were used. HT29 cell line was MSI–/ Ala273-mutp53, its subclone HT29A3 being transfected by wtp53. LoVo cell line was MSI+/ wtp53, its subclone X17LoVo dominantly expressed Ala273-mutp53 after transfection. LoVo tumours (MSI+/ mutp53) were more sensitive than X17LoVo (MSI+/ mutp53. HT 29 tumours (MSI–Imutp53), were refractory to CPT-11 while HT29A3 tumours (MSI–/ wtp53) were sensitive, showing that wtp53 improves the drug-response in these MSI–tumours. Levels of mRNA expression of top1, fasR, TP53 and mdr1 were semi-quantified by reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction. None of these parameters correlated with CPT-11 response. Taken together, these observations indicate that MSI and p53 alterations could be associated with different CPT-11 sensitivities; MSI phenotype moderately influences the CPT-11 sensitivity, MSI+being more sensitive than MSI–CRC freshly obtained from patients, mutp53 status being associated with a poor response to CPT-11. © 2000 Cancer Research Campaign
Adjustable- Versus Fixed-Rate Mortgage Choice: The Role of Initial Rate Discounts

This paper investigates relative pricing determinants of the fixed-rate mortgage (FRM) versus adjustable-rate mortgage (ARM) decision. A probit model is estimated using data from a national sample of residential housing transactions for the 1986 and 1988 period. The results suggest that the probability of ARM choice is highly sensitive to ARM initial rate ("teaser") discounts and differences in the ratio of FRM to ARM points. In addition, the findings indicate that the level of local housing prices is an important determinant of ARM choice.