Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Is marketing becoming a dirty word? A longitudinal study of public perceptions of marketing

There is growing sentiment in the marketing community that our society holds an increasingly unfavorable view of the marketing profession. However, this sentiment is largely based on anecdotal and experiential evidence. In response, the authors use content analysis of the general press to investigate the American public's current and past attitudes towards marketing. They obtain compelling evidence that the public's attitude towards marketing has deteriorated over the past twenty years. They observe a similar trend in how marketing is treated in the American business press and in blogs. Next, the authors replicate their analyses on news media from another Western society, France, where marketing activity is subject to greater regulation than in the United States. In discussing the results, they propose that the marketing profession will evolve through a mix of three distinct practices that they name ego-marketing, techno-marketing and alter-marketing. The authors argue that marketing's image in the population will ultimately depend on the growth and strength of each practice within this mix, with techno-marketing playing a pivotal role. They conclude by reflecting on the role that marketing scholars can play in this evolution.
Spatiotemporal Distribution of Neurovascular Alignment in Remodeling Adult Rat Mesentery Microvascular Networks

An emerging area of microvascular research focuses on the links between neural and vascular patterning. However, the functional dependence between vascular and neural growth in adult tissues remains underinvestigated. The objective of this study was to determine the spatial and temporal coordination between vascular and neural networks over a time course of adult microvascular growth. Mesentery tissues from adult male Wistar rats were harvested prior to stimulation, and 2, 10 and 30 days after angiogenesis stimulated by mast cell degranulation. Tissues were immunolabeled for PECAM (endothelial cell marker) and class III β-tubulin (peripheral nerve marker). Neurovascular alignment was quantified per vessel category: arterioles (>20 µm), pre-capillary arterioles (10–20 µm), post-capillary venules (10–20 µm), venules (>20 µm), capillaries (<10 µm) and capillary sprouts. Neurovascular alignment along pre-capillary arterioles, capillaries, post-capillary venules and venules was decreased compared to unstimulated levels on days 2 and 10. These decreases inversely correlated with increases in vessel density per vessel category. By day 30, alignment either returned to unstimulated levels or was increased compared to day 10. These results suggest that neurovascular alignment arises after microvascular network growth and is present along arterioles, venules and even capillaries.
Temporal and spatial changes in the expression pattern of multiple red and green subtype opsin genes during zebrafish development

SUMMARY Zebrafish have two red, LWS-1 and LWS-2, and four green, RH2-1, RH2-2, RH2-3 and RH2-4, opsin genes encoding photopigments with distinct absorption spectra. Occurrence of opsin subtypes by gene duplication is characteristic of fish but little is known whether the subtypes are expressed differently in the retina, either spatially or temporally. Here we show by in situ hybridization the dynamic expression patterns of the opsin subtypes in the zebrafish retina. Expression of red type opsins is initiated with the shorter-wavelength subtype LWS-2, followed by the longer-wavelength subtype LWS-1. In the adult retina, LWS-2 was expressed in the central to dorsal area and LWS-1 in the ventral and peripheral areas. Expression patterns of green type opsins were similar to those of the red type opsins. The expression started with the shortest wavelength subtype RH2-1 followed by the longer wavelength ones, and in the adult retina, the shorter wavelength subtypes (RH2-1 and RH2-2) were expressed in the central to dorsal area and longer wavelength subtypes (RH2-3 and RH2-4) in the ventral and peripheral areas. These results provide the framework for subsequent studies of opsin gene regulation and for probing functional rationale of the developmental changes by using the power of zebrafish genetics.
Requirement for Ras/Rac1-Mediated p38 and c-Jun N-Terminal Kinase Signaling in Stat3 Transcriptional Activity Induced by the Src Oncoprotein

ABSTRACT Signal transducers and activators of transcription (STATs) are transcription factors that mediate normal biologic responses to cytokines and growth factors. However, abnormal activation of certain STAT family members, including Stat3, is increasingly associated with oncogenesis. In fibroblasts expressing the Src oncoprotein, activation of Stat3 induces specific gene expression and is required for cell transformation. Although the Src tyrosine kinase induces constitutive Stat3 phosphorylation on tyrosine, activation of Stat3-mediated gene regulation requires both tyrosine and serine phosphorylation of Stat3. We investigated the signaling pathways underlying the constitutive Stat3 activation in Src oncogenesis. Expression of Ras or Rac1 dominant negative protein blocks Stat3-mediated gene regulation induced by Src in a manner consistent with dependence on p38 and c-Jun N-terminal kinase (JNK). Both of these serine/threonine kinases and Stat3 serine phosphorylation are constitutively induced in Src-transformed fibroblasts. Furthermore, inhibition of p38 and JNK activities suppresses constitutive Stat3 serine phosphorylation and Stat3-mediated gene regulation. In vitro kinase assays with purified full-length Stat3 as the substrate show that both JNK and p38 can phosphorylate Stat3 on serine. Moreover, inhibition of p38 activity and thus of Stat3 serine phosphorylation results in suppression of transformation by v-Src but not v-Ras, consistent with a requirement for Stat3 serine phosphorylation in Src transformation. Our results demonstrate that Ras- and Rac1-mediated p38 and JNK signals are required for Stat3 transcriptional activity induced by the Src oncoprotein. These findings delineate a network of tyrosine and serine/threonine kinase signaling pathways that converge on Stat3 in the context of oncogenesis.
Pediatric Intracranial Ependymomas: Prognostic Relevance of Histological, Immunohistochemical, and Flow Cytometric Factors

The correlation between the histological features and clinical outcome remains poor in pediatric intracranial ependymomas. We performed a retrospective study of a group of 31 patients (diagnosed from 1985 to 1995) to assess prognostic implications of the current grading system, of histological and immunohistochemical features, and of ploidy status estimated by flow cytometry. Immunoexpression of a broad spectrum of antigens was evaluated, including MIB-1, topoisomerase-IIα, cyclin D1, glial and epithelial proteins (GFAP, EMA, cytokeratins), molecules involved in controlling apoptosis (bcl-2, caspase-3/CPP32), and p53 oncoprotein. Univariate and multivariate statistical analyses were performed to evaluate the influence of each variable on both the progression free survival (PFS) and the overall survival (OS) with at least 7-year follow up. Although we showed a significant correlation between histological grade and prognosis, the current grading system failed in predicting outcome in nearly one third of individual cases. Problems with interpathologist reproducibility were also demonstrated. The extent of surgical resection was the only clinical factor that was associated with survival. Both the PFS and the OS were significantly decreased for the following pathological variables: increased cellularity (>300 nuclei per HPF), mitotic activity of >7 per 10 HPF, increased MIB-1 labeling index (LI), topoisomerase-IIα LI, S-phase fraction, and p53 and bcl-2 positivity. Increased cyclin D1 LI was demonstrated to have only a marginally significant impact on PFS. A flow chart modeling was further performed to formulate a scheme for discriminating of prognostic subgroups. Based on that, p53 immunopositivity and/or MIB-1 LI of >5% (after subtotal resection) or MIB-1 LI of >15% (after complete resection) were the strongest indicators of the tumor's aggressive behavior and of a poor prognosis of the disease. Foci of hypercellularity should be specifically looked for in ependymomas for assessing the immunohistochemical studies.
Proton cyclotron waves at Mars: Exosphere structure and evidence for a fast neutral disk

Mars is an unmagnetized planet whose hydrogen exosphere extends into the solar wind, creating proton cyclotron waves. Mars Global Surveyor data reveal the occurrence of waves to be extensive and often intermittent at large distance, indicating that the exosphere is time varying or non‐spherical. When the region of wave occurrence is examined in a magnetic‐electric coordinate system, a strong asymmetry in the occurrence of these waves is seen in the direction of the interplanetary electric field. The extensive, yet asymmetric and intermittent, occurrence of waves can be understood if, after protons are first picked up near Mars, the ions are neutralized by charge exchange and transported across field lines to distant regions, allowing the pickup process to extend far from Mars on only one side of the planet. Thus the exosphere of Mars appears to extend in a disk of fast hydrogen atoms both downstream and to the side of Mars in the direction of the interplanetary electric field.
Jointly Identifying Entities and Extracting Relations in Encyclopedia Text via A Graphical Model Approach

In this paper, we investigate the problem of entity identification and relation extraction from encyclopedia articles, and we propose a joint discriminative probabilistic model with arbitrary graphical structure to optimize all relevant subtasks simultaneously. This modeling offers a natural formalism for exploiting rich dependencies and interactions between relevant subtasks to capture mutual benefits, as well as a great flexibility to incorporate a large collection of arbitrary, overlapping and non-independent features. We show the parameter estimation algorithm of this model. Moreover, we propose a new inference method, namely collective iterative classification (CIC), to find the most likely assignments for both entities and relations. We evaluate our model on real-world data from Wikipedia for this task, and compare with current state-of-the-art pipeline and joint models, demonstrating the effectiveness and feasibility of our approach.
Antithetic Effects of MBD2a on Gene Regulation

ABSTRACT DNA methylation is essential for epigenetic gene regulation during development. The cyclic AMP (cAMP)-responsive element (CRE) is found in the promoter of many cAMP-regulated genes and plays important roles in their gene expression. Methylation occurs on the CRE site and results in transcriptional repression via a direct mechanism, that is, prevention by the methyl group of binding of the cAMP-responsive factor CREB to this site. A recent study indicated that the nucleosome is also important in repressing transcription. In this study, we investigated the regulation of transcriptional repression on methylated CRE. We focused on methyl-CpG binding domain protein 2 (MBD2). MBD2 consists of two forms, MBD2a and MBD2b, the latter lacking the N-terminal extension of MBD2a. Unexpectedly, we found that MBD2a, but not MBD2b, promoted activation of the unmethylated cAMP-responsive genes. An in vivo binding assay revealed that MBD2a selectively interacted with RNA helicase A (RHA), a component of CREB transcriptional coactivator complexes. MBD2a and RHA cooperatively enhanced CREB-dependent gene expression. Interestingly, coimmunoprecipitation assays demonstrated that MBD2a binding to RHA was not associated with histone deacetylase 1. Our results indicate a novel role for MBD2a in gene regulation.
Energy-Efficient Continuous Activity Recognition on Mobile Phones: An Activity-Adaptive Approach

Power consumption on mobile phones is a painful obstacle towards adoption of continuous sensing driven applications, e.g., continuously inferring individual's locomotive activities (such as 'sit', 'stand' or 'walk') using the embedded accelerometer sensor. To reduce the energy overhead of such continuous activity sensing, we first investigate how the choice of accelerometer sampling frequency & classification features affects, separately for each activity, the "energy overhead" vs. "classification accuracy" tradeoff. We find that such tradeoff is activity specific. Based on this finding, we introduce an activity-sensitive strategy (dubbed "A3R" - Adaptive Accelerometer-based Activity Recognition) for continuous activity recognition, where the choice of both the accelerometer sampling frequency and the classification features are adapted in real-time, as an individual performs daily lifestyle-based activities. We evaluate the performance of A3R using longitudinal, multi-day observations of continuous activity traces. We also implement A3R for the Android platform and carry out evaluation of energy savings. We show that our strategy can achieve an energy savings of 50% under ideal conditions. For users running the A3R application on their Android phones, we achieve an overall energy savings of 20-25%.
Usefulness of 3T diffusion-weighted MRI for discrimination of reactive and metastatic cervical lymph nodes in patients with oral squamous cell carcinoma: a pilot study.

OBJECTIVES To study the diagnostic accuracy of 3T diffusion-weighted MRI (DW-MRI) for the discrimination of reactive and metastatic cervical lymph nodes in patients with oral squamous cell carcinoma. METHODS DW T1 and T2 weighted MRI was performed in 25 patients with biopsy-proved primary oral squamous cell carcinoma. The mean apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) values of 30 histopathologically proved reactive lymph nodes and 21 histopathologically proved metastatic lymph nodes were compared using an unpaired t-test. A cut-off ADC value with optimal diagnostic sensitivity, specificity and area under the curve in discrimination of the two groups was determined using a receiver operating characteristic curve analysis. RESULTS The mean ADC values of reactive lymph node and metastatic lymph node groups were (1.037 ± 0.149) × 10(-3) and (0.702 ± 0.197) × 10(-3) mm(2) s(-1), respectively. A statistically significant difference in ADC values of the two groups was certified (p < 0.0001). An optimal ADC threshold value of 0.887 × 10(-3) mm(2) s(-1) was suggested as the cut-off point, which resulted in 93.33% sensitivity, 80.95% specificity, 88.20% accuracy and area under curve of 0.887. CONCLUSIONS Our preliminary study indicates that the addition of 3T DW-MRI may be useful for discriminating between reactive lymph nodes and metastatic lymph nodes in patients with oral squamous cell carcinoma. However, larger studies are still required to validate our results and to standardize this imaging technique for daily clinical practice.
Asymptotic error probability analysis of quadratic receivers in Rayleigh-fading channels with applications to a unified analysis of coherent and noncoherent space-Time receivers

A general, asymptotic (high signal-to-noise (SNR)) error analysis is introduced for quadratic receivers in frequency-flat and multipath Rayleigh-fading channels with multiple transmit and receive antennas. Asymptotically tight expressions for the pairwise error probabilities are obtained for coherent, noncoherent, and differentially coherent space-time receivers. Not only is our unified analysis applicable to more general modulation schemes and/or channel models than previously considered, but it also reveals a hitherto unrecognized eigenvalue structure that is common to all of these problems. In addition to providing an easy recipe for computing the asymptotic pairwise error rates, we make some conclusions regarding criteria for the design of signal constellations and codes such as (a) the same design criteria apply for both correlated and independent and identically distributed (i.i.d.) fading processes and (b) for noncoherent communications, unitary signals are optimal in the sense that they minimize the asymptotic union bound.
A day at the root of the internet

We analyzed the largest simultaneous collection of full-payload packet traces from a core component of the global Internet infrastructure ever made available to academic researchers. Our dataset consists of three large samples of global DNS traffic collected during three annual "Day in the Life of the Internet" (DITL) experiments in January 2006, January 2007, and March 2008. Building on our previous comparison of DITL 2006 and DITL 2007 DNS datasets [28], we venture to extract historical trends, comparisons with other data sources, and interpretations, including traffic growth, usage patterns, impact of anycast distribution, and persistent problems in the root nameserver system that reflect ominously on the global Internet. Most notably, the data consistently reveals an extraordinary amount of DNS pollution -- an estimated 98% of the traffic at the root servers should not be there at all. Unfortunately, there is no clear path to reducing the pollution, so root server operators, and those who finance them, must perpetually overprovision to handle this pollution. Our study presents the most complete characterization to date of traffic reaching the roots, and while the study does not adequately fulfill the "Day in the Life of the Internet" vision, it does succeed at unequivocally demonstrating that the infrastructure on which we are all now betting our professional, personal, and political lives deserves a closer and more scientific look.
Household Transmission of Pandemic (H1N1) 2009 Virus, Taiwan

During August–November 2009, to investigate disease transmission within households in Taiwan, we recruited 87 pandemic (H1N1) 2009 patients and their household members. Overall, pandemic (H1N1) 2009 virus was transmitted to 60 (27%) of 223 household contacts. Transmission was 4× higher to children than to adults (61% vs. 15%; p<0.001).
Genotyping of Toxoplasma gondii Strains Isolated from Patients with Ocular Toxoplasmosis in Iran

Background: Toxoplasma gondii is an obligate, intracellular protozoon that develops its sexual stage in cat’s intestinal epithelial cells as definitive host and develops its asexual stage in different tissues of a wide range hosts called intermediate host. The protozoon is a food-borne and worldwide parasite that can cause serious complications such as abortion in pregnant women, encephalitis, and ocular toxoplasmosis. The present study aimed to genotype T. gondii strains isolated from patients with toxoplasmic retinochoroiditis. Methods: Fifty-two blood samples were taken from patients with ocular toxoplasmosis, from July 2013 to July 2014. The specimens were collected from three ophthalmological hospitals of Tehran, Iran. After that, DNA extraction was performed using kit on separated buffy coats of serologically positive blood samples. Then PCR was done in GRA6 gene. For digestion of products, MseI endonuclease was used. Finally, some of the PCR products were sequenced. Results: All of 52 samples were found positive by serological and PCR-RFLP methods and all of isolated strains belong to type III genotype. Type III genotype has the highest prevalence in Iranian ocular toxoplasmic patients. Conclusion: T. gondii, particularly its type III should not be neglected as a cause of retinochoroiditis.
A Modified Frequency Domain Condition for the Physical Realizability of Linear Quantum Stochastic Systems

This paper is concerned with a modified version of the frequency domain physical realizability (PR) condition for linear quantum systems. We consider open quantum systems whose dynamic variables satisfy the canonical commutation relations of an open quantum harmonic oscillator and are governed by linear quantum stochastic differential equations (QSDEs). In order to correspond to physical quantum systems, these QSDEs must satisfy PR conditions. We provide a relatively simple proof that the PR condition is equivalent to the frequency domain $(J,J)$-unitarity of the input–output transfer function and orthogonality of the feedthrough matrix of the system without the technical spectral assumptions required in previous work. We also show that the poles and transmission zeros associated with the transfer function of PR linear quantum systems are the mirror reflections of each other about the imaginary axis. An example is provided to illustrate the results.
Robust multigrid smoothers for three dimensional elliptic equations with strong anisotropies

We discuss the behavior of several plane relaxation methods as multigrid smoothers for the solution of a discrete anisotropic elliptic model problem on cell-centered grids. The methods compared are plane Jacobi with damping, plane Jacobi with partial damping, plane Gauss-Seidel, plane zebra Gauss-Seidel, and line Gauss-Seidel. Based on numerical experiments and local mode analysis, we compare the smoothing factor of the different methods in the presence of strong anisotropies. A four-color Gauss-Seidel method is found to have the best numerical and architectural properties of the methods considered in the present work. Although alternating direction plane relaxation schemes are simpler and more robust than other approaches, they are not currently used in industrial and production codes because they require the solution of a two-dimensional problem for each plane in each direction. We verify the theoretical predictions of Thole and Trottenberg that an exact solution of each plane is not necessary and that a single two-dimensional multigrid cycle gives the same result as an exact solution, in much less execution time. Parallelization of the two-dimensional multigrid cycles, the kernel of the three-dimensional implicit solver, is also discussed. Alternating-plane smoothers are found to be highly efficient multigrid smoothers for anisotropic elliptic problems.
Decreased Serum Hepatocyte Growth Factor (HGF) in Individuals with Depression Correlates with Severity of Disease

Aim To assess serum Hepatocyte Growth Factor (HGF) levels in individuals with depression and to test the hypothesis that there is a relationship between severity of depression and HGF concentration. Subjects and methods Serum from 26 clinically depressed individuals and 19 controls were tested for serum HGF using ELISAs. Correlation was established between HGF concentration and disease severity. Results Depressed individuals had significantly lower serum levels of HGF compared to controls (P < 0.0001). HGF concentration correlated with overall depressive behavior (P = 0.03) and specifically depression (P = 0.02), but not anxiety (P = 0.36). Discussion These results suggest an association between HGF serum levels and clinically depressed individuals and demonstrate a correlation between severity of depression and HGF levels. Further studies of the predictive strength of HGF as a biomarker for depression may be warranted.