Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Community-Based Weighted Graph Model for Valence-Arousal Prediction of Affective Words

Compared to the categorical approach that represents affective states as several discrete classes (e.g., positive and negative), the dimensional approach represents affective states as continuous numerical values in multiple dimensions, such as the valence-arousal (VA) space, thus allowing for more fine-grained sentiment analysis. In building dimensional sentiment applications, affective lexicons with VA ratings are useful resources but are still very rare. Several semi-supervised methods such as the kernel method, linear regression, and the pagerank algorithm have been investigated to automatically determine the VA ratings of affective words from a set of semantically similar seed words. These methods suffer from two major limitations. First, they apply an equal weight to all seeds similar to an unseen word in predicting its VA ratings. Second, even similar seeds may have quite different ratings (or an inverse polarity) of valence/arousal to the unseen word, thus reducing prediction performance. To overcome these limitations, this study proposes a community-based weighted graph model that can select seeds which are both similar to and have similar ratings (or the same polarity) with each unseen word to form a community (subgraph) so that its VA ratings can be estimated from such high-quality seeds using a weighted propagation scheme. That is, seeds more similar to unseen words contribute more to the estimation process. Experimental results show that the proposed method yields better prediction performance for both English and Chinese datasets.
Time Radically Alters Ex Situ Evidentiary Soil 16S Bacterial Profiles Produced Via Next‐Generation Sequencing , ,

Previous research has revealed the potential of soil bacterial profiling for forensic purposes; however, investigators have not thoroughly examined fluctuations in microbial profiles from soil aged on evidence. In this research, soils collected from multiple habitats were placed on evidence items and sampled over time, and then bacterial profiles were generated via next‐generation sequencing of the 16S rRNA locus. Bacterial abundance charts and nonmetric multidimensional scaling plots provided visual representation of bacterial profiles temporally, while supervised classification was used to statistically associate evidence to a source. The ex situ evidence soils displayed specific, consistent taxonomic changes as they aged, resulting in their drift in multidimensional space, but never toward a different habitat. Ninety‐five percent of the 364 evidentiary profiles statistically classified to the correct habitat, with misclassification generally stemming from evidence type and increased age. Ultimately, understanding bacterial changes that occur temporally in ex situ soils should enhance their use in forensic investigations.
Genetic Profile of Patients with Familial Mediterranean Fever (FMF): Single Center Experience at King Hussein Medical Center (KHMC)

Objective: To describe the spectrum of genetic mutations in patients with clinical diagnosis of Familial Mediterranean Fever. Method: This is a retrospective study of 3359 sera samples for patient with clinical diagnosis of FMF, over a period of 6 years. The samples were tested for 12 mutations of the MEFV gene by PCR& hybridization of the PCR product with Probes immobilized as an array of panel lines. Results: A total of 1868 (55.6%) samples were found negative, and one or more mutations were detected in 1491 (44.4%) distributed along the mutations. Of the positive results, the Frequency of the mutations was as follows, the M694V was the most common mutation 30%, followed by E 148Q 21.5%, V 726 A 20%, M6801 G/C 9%, M6941 8.3%, P369s 3.7%, A744S 3.1% and 4.2% among the 4 remaining mutations. Conclusion: Frequency of common mutations in our study show similar results in comparisons with Mediterranean countries like Egypt, Turkey, and Syria with the most common mutation in our study being M694V followed by E148 Q.
Comparison of Laboratory Compaction Methods using X-ray Computer Tomography

ABSTRACT Changes and differences in homogeneity of asphalt concrete specimens during Marshall and Rolling-Wheel compaction are investigated by means of standard air-void content determination (AV) and X-ray Computer Tomography (CT). Following an earlier study on Gyratory compaction with the same objective and material, this study, again, focuses on experimental aspects serving as a basis for laboratories and producers to optimize compaction procedures and devices. The results demonstrate that X-ray CT is a powerful tool leading to a better understanding of compaction mechanisms. In this way, X-ray CT may be considered very suitable for developing improved laboratory compaction methods and procedures.
Estimating road traffic injuries in Jinja district, Uganda, using the capture-recapture method

ABSTRACT Road traffic injuries (RTIs) are commonly under-reported in low-and-medium-income countries. This study aimed to estimate the number of RTIs and determine the magnitude of under-reporting by traffic police and hospital registries. A two-source capture-recapture method was applied to RTI data from police and hospital registries. Seven matching variables; sex of the injured, date, place, time, day of crash and road user type were used to get the matched cases. Police independently reported 46 RTIs and the hospitals reported 206 RTIs. Using the capture-recapture analysis, both sources estimated 313 RTIs (95% CI 273–343). The police registry captured 14.4% of the estimated number of RTIs and the hospitals captured 60.4%. The estimated number of RTIs was higher than reported by either the police or the hospitals alone. Neither the police nor the hospitals provided accurate data on RTIs, calling for the strengthening of both sources of data.
Novel method for testing the grease ­resistance of pet food packaging

For paper‐based dry pet food packaging, one of the main requirements is a high resistance against staining from the fat in the product. For both development and quality control, rapid and reliable standardized test procedures assessing this property are needed. Although a number of tests are available, they either apply only to certain types of packaging materials and show limited correlation with field behaviour, or employ non‐standard testing substances, long testing times and complicated equipment. In response to this situation, a new testing procedure that reflects field behaviour but without the drawbacks of the existing tests has been developed. The new test shows high reproducibility and good correlation with field performance for a wide range of multiwall bag and folding box materials with different types of grease resistance treatment. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Achieving Optimal Post-Exercise Muscle Protein Remodeling in Physically Active Adults through Whole Food Consumption

Dietary protein ingestion is critical to maintaining the quality and quantity of skeletal muscle mass throughout adult life. The performance of acute exercise enhances muscle protein remodeling by stimulating protein synthesis rates for several hours after each bout, which can be optimized by consuming protein during the post-exercise recovery period. To date, the majority of the evidence regarding protein intake to optimize post-exercise muscle protein synthesis rates is limited to isolated protein sources. However, it is more common to ingest whole food sources of protein within a normal eating pattern. Emerging evidence demonstrates a promising role for the ingestion of whole foods as an effective nutritional strategy to support muscle protein remodeling and recovery after exercise. This review aims to evaluate the efficacy of the ingestion of nutrient-rich and protein-dense whole foods to support post-exercise muscle protein remodeling and recovery with pertinence towards physically active people.
Large-scale determination and characterization of cell type-specific regulatory elements in the human genome

Histone modifications have been widely elucidated to play vital roles in gene regulation and cell identity. The Roadmap Epigenomics Consortium generated a reference catalogue of several key histone modifications across >100s of human cell types and tissues. Decoding these epigenomes into functional regulatory elements is a challenging task in computational biology. To this end, we adopted a differential chromatin modification analysis framework to comprehensively determine and characterize cell type-specific regulatory elements (CSREs) and their histone modification codes in the human epigenomes of five histone modifications across 127 tissues or cell types. The CSREs show significant relevance with cell type-specific biological functions and diseases and cell identity. Clustering of CSREs with their specificity signals reveals diverse histone codes, demonstrating the diversity of functional roles of CSREs within the same cell or tissue. Last but not least, dynamics of CSREs from close cell types or tissues can give a detailed view of developmental processes such as normal tissue development and cancer occurrence.
MicroRNA-182 drives colonization and macroscopic metastasis via targeting its suppressor SNAI1 in breast cancer

Metastasis is a multi-step process. Tumor cells occur epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) to start metastasis, then, they need to undergo a reverse progression of EMT, mesenchymal-epithelial transition (MET), to colonize and form macrometastases at distant organs to complete the whole process of metastasis. Although microRNAs (miRNAs) functions in EMT process are well established, their influence on colonization and macrometastases formation remains unclear. Here, we established an EMT model in MCF-10A cells with SNAI1 overexpression, and characterized some EMT-related microRNAs. We identified that miR-182, which was directly suppressed by SNAI1, could enable an epithelial-like state in breast cancer cells in vitro, and enhance colonization and macrometastases in vivo. Subsequent studies showed that miR-182 exerted its function through targeting its suppressor SNAI1. Moreover, higher expression level of miR-182 was detected in metastatic lymph nodes, compared with paired primary tumor tissues. In addition, the expression level of miR-182 was negatively correlated with that of SNAI1 in these clinical specimens. Taking together, our findings describe the role of miR-182 in colonization and macrometastases in breast cancer for the first time, and provide a promise for diagnosis or therapy of breast cancer metastasis.
Effects of Premature Birth Heritability of Cognition Heritability of Structural Brain Changes

T he aim of this thesis was to explore how genetic and environmental influences affect brain maturation and cognition around puberty in an epidemiological sample of children from the general population in the Netherlands. For this purpose, a large cohort of children was studied within a three year interval. The sample was recruited from the Netherlands Twin Register (NTR) and consisted of 112 families at baseline, including 9-year-old twins and an older sibling. There were 89 families (80%) who returned for the follow-up assessment. Data on cognitive abilities were collected with psychometric IQ tests and a comprehensive neuropsychological testing protocol. Brain anatomy was acquired by 1.5T magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). The studies described in this thesis all include an epidemiological sample of children, aimed to obtain a population based sample from across the Netherlands (see Chapter 2). This thesis includes studies of genetic and environmental influences covering a broad range of aspects of structural brain maturation and cognition. See for an overview of the main findings Table 9.1. The aim of these studies was to gain insight into how events around birth can have an effect on brain development and cognition in later life, to describe the extent to which genetic factors influence individual differences in brain development and cognition and to study the relation between brain structure and cognition at ages 9 and 12 years. Its strength includes the large group of twins followed longitudinally with narrow age range at both assessments. This longitudinal, genetically informative design allows modeling of genetic influences across development. The key questions that were addressed are whether the same genes act across ages 9 and 12 years, or whether there are age-specific genetic factors that are expressed at one age but not at another, to what extent genetic and environmental influences act on structural brain changes between 9 and 12 years of age, and to what extent genetic and non-genetic influences on cognition and brain structure overlap. In this last chapter the main results of the study are summarized and their implications for further research are discussed. The aim of chapter 3 was to assess the effects of gestational age (i.e. pregnancy duration) and birth weight on brain volumes and cognition at a later age. Nine-year-old twins (N = 192 twins) were included in this study with a gestational age between 32 and 40 weeks and within the normal range of birth weight, from …
Differential Contribution of Subunit Interfaces to α9α10 Nicotinic Acetylcholine Receptor Function

Nicotinic acetylcholine receptors can be assembled from either homomeric or heteromeric pentameric subunit combinations. At the interface of the extracellular domains of adjacent subunits lies the acetylcholine binding site, composed of a principal component provided by one subunit and a complementary component of the adjacent subunit. Compared with neuronal nicotinic acetylcholine cholinergic receptors (nAChRs) assembled from α and β subunits, the α9α10 receptor is an atypical member of the family. It is a heteromeric receptor composed only of α subunits. Whereas mammalian α9 subunits can form functional homomeric α9 receptors, α10 subunits do not generate functional channels when expressed heterologously. Hence, it has been proposed that α10 might serve as a structural subunit, much like a β subunit of heteromeric nAChRs, providing only complementary components to the agonist binding site. Here, we have made use of site-directed mutagenesis to examine the contribution of subunit interface domains to α9α10 receptors by a combination of electrophysiological and radioligand binding studies. Characterization of receptors containing Y190T mutations revealed unexpectedly that both α9 and α10 subunits equally contribute to the principal components of the α9α10 nAChR. In addition, we have shown that the introduction of a W55T mutation impairs receptor binding and function in the rat α9 subunit but not in the α10 subunit, indicating that the contribution of α9 and α10 subunits to complementary components of the ligand-binding site is nonequivalent. We conclude that this asymmetry, which is supported by molecular docking studies, results from adaptive amino acid changes acquired only during the evolution of mammalian α10 subunits.
Prediction Cubes

In this paper, we introduce a new family of tools for exploratory data analysis, called prediction cubes. As in standard OLAP data cubes, each cell in a prediction cube contains a value that summarizes the data belonging to that cell, and the granularity of cells can be changed via operations such as roll-up and drill-down. In contrast to data cubes, in which each cell value is computed by an aggregate function, e.g., SUM or AVG, each cell value in a prediction cube summarizes a predictive model trained on the data corresponding to that cell, and characterizes its decision behavior or predictiveness. In this paper, we propose and motivate prediction cubes, and show that they can be efficiently computed by exploiting the idea of model decomposition.
Sex‐specific manifestation of genetic risk for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in the general population

Background Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is more commonly diagnosed in males than in females. A growing body of research suggests that females with ADHD might be underdiagnosed or receive alternative diagnoses, such as anxiety or depression. Other lines of reasoning suggest that females might be protected from developing ADHD, requiring a higher burden of genetic risk to manifest the disorder. Methods We tested these two hypotheses, using common variant genetic data from two population‐based cohorts. First, we tested whether females and males diagnosed with anxiety or depression differ in terms of their genetic risk for ADHD, assessed as polygenic risk scores (PRS). Second, we tested whether females and males with ADHD differed in ADHD genetic risk burden. We used three different diagnostic definitions: registry‐based clinical diagnoses, screening‐based research diagnoses and algorithm‐based research diagnoses, to investigate possible referral biases. Results In individuals with a registry‐based clinical diagnosis of anxiety or depression, females had higher ADHD PRS than males [OR(CI) = 1.39 (1.12–1.73)] but there was no sex difference for screening‐based [OR(CI) = 1.15 (0.94–1.42)] or algorithm‐based [OR(CI) = 1.04 (0.89–1.21)] diagnoses. There was also no sex difference in ADHD PRS in individuals with ADHD diagnoses that were registry‐based [OR(CI) = 1.04 (0.84–1.30)], screening‐based [OR(CI) = 0.96 (0.85–1.08)] or algorithm‐based [OR(CI) = 1.15 (0.78–1.68)]. Conclusions This study provides genetic evidence that ADHD risk may be more likely to manifest or be diagnosed as anxiety or depression in females than in males. Contrary to some earlier studies, the results do not support increased ADHD genetic risk in females with ADHD as compared to affected males.
Sprouty2 correlates with favorable prognosis of gastric adenocarcinoma via suppressing FGFR2-induced ERK phosphorylation and cancer progression

Fibroblast growth factor receptor 2 (FGFR2) has been identified as a predictive biomarker for unfavorable prognosis of gastric adenocarcinoma. As a well-defined antagonist in FGFR2-induced RAS/ERK activation, ectopic expression of sprouty (SPRY) family was reported in several kinds of cancers except gastric cancer. To explore the clinical significance of SPRY family and its correlation with FGFR2, we detected the expression of FGFR2 and SPRY family in 104 cases of gastric adenocarcinoma and subsequently analyzed their correlations with clinicopathological factors and overall survival rates by univariate and multivariate analysis. As the result, we demonstrated that both FGFR2 high-expression and SPRY2 low-expression indicated poorer prognosis of gastric adenocarcinoma. SPRY2 low-expression was significantly associated with FGFR2 high-expression, positive lymphatic invasion and metastasis. We further proved that SPRY2 could suppress FGFR2-induced ERK phosphorylation, cell proliferation and invasion with experiments in vitro and in vivo. In conclusion, we demonstrated that SPRY2 low-expression is a biomarker for unfavorable prognosis in gastric adenocarcinoma. SPRY2 can antagonize FGFR2-induced proliferation and invasion via suppressing ERK phosphorylation in gastric cancer cells, indicating SPRY2 as a potential therapeutic target for gastric adenocarcinoma treatment.
Analyzing supplier development criteria for an automobile industry

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to present an approach to identify and rank the criteria used for the supplier development using interpretative structural modeling (ISM). Design/methodology/approach – The paper develops a framework to analyze the interactions among the criteria such as competitive pressure, evaluation and certification system, incentives, supplier development programs, inter‐organizational communication, buyer‐supplier relationship, supplier commitment, supplier performance, asset specificity, joint action, trust, long‐term strategic goals, top management support, purchasing performance, and supplier strategic objective for the supplier development using ISM. The developed framework is illustrated using a case study taken in an automobile firm.Findings – The paper contributes to research in supply chain management (SCM) and particularly in supplier development. Research in the area of SCM has intensified in recent years for a number of reasons. Managers have now realized that action.
Snow effects on alpine vegetation in the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau

Understanding the relationships between snow and vegetation is important for interpretation of the responses of alpine ecosystems to climate changes. The Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau is regarded as an ideal area due to its undisturbed features with low population and relatively high snow cover. We used 500 m Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) datasets during 2001–2010 to examine the snow–vegetation relationships, specifically, (1) the influence of snow melting date on vegetation green-up date and (2) the effects of snow cover duration on vegetation greenness. The results showed that the alpine vegetation responded strongly to snow phenology (i.e., snow melting date and snow cover duration) over large areas of the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau. Snow melting date and vegetation green-up date were significantly correlated (p < 0.1) in 39.9% of meadow areas (accounting for 26.2% of vegetated areas) and 36.7% of steppe areas (28.1% of vegetated areas). Vegetation growth was influenced by different seasonal snow cover durations (SCDs) in different regions. Generally, the December–February and March–May SCDs played a significantly role in vegetation growth, both positively and negatively, depending on different water source regions. Snow's positive impact on vegetation was larger than the negative impact.
Color-opponent mechanisms for local hue encoding in a hierarchical framework

A biologically plausible computational model for color representation is introduced. We present a mechanistic hierarchical model of neurons that not only successfully encodes local hue, but also explicitly reveals how the contributions of each visual cortical layer participating in the process can lead to a hue representation. Our proposed model benefits from studies on the visual cortex and builds a network of single-opponent and hue-selective neurons. Local hue encoding is achieved through gradually increasing nonlinearity in terms of cone inputs to single-opponent cells. We demonstrate that our model's single-opponent neurons have wide tuning curves, while the hue-selective neurons in our model V4 layer exhibit narrower tunings, resembling those in V4 of the primate visual system. Our simulation experiments suggest that neurons in V4 or later layers have the capacity of encoding unique hues. Moreover, with a few examples, we present the possibility of spanning the infinite space of physical hues by combining the hue-selective neurons in our model.
Exploiting User and Venue Characteristics for Fine-Grained Tweet Geolocation

Which venue is a tweet posted from? We call this a fine-grained geolocation problem. Given an observed tweet, the task is to infer its discrete posting venue, e.g., a specific restaurant. This recovers the venue context and differs from prior work, which geolocats tweets to location coordinates or cities/neighborhoods. First, we conduct empirical analysis to uncover venue and user characteristics for improving geolocation. For venues, we observe spatial homophily, in which venues near each other have more similar tweet content (i.e., text representations) compared to venues further apart. For users, we observe that they are spatially focused and more likely to visit venues near their previous visits. We also find that a substantial proportion of users post one or more geocoded tweet(s), thus providing their location history data. We then propose geolocation models that exploit spatial homophily and spatial focus characteristics plus posting time information. Our models rank candidate venues of test tweets such that the actual posting venue is ranked high. To better tune model parameters, we introduce a learning-to-rank framework. Our best model significantly outperforms state-of-the-art baselines. Furthermore, we show that tweets without any location-indicative words can be geolocated meaningfully as well.