Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Local Synthesis of Actin-Binding Protein β-Thymosin Regulates Neurite Outgrowth

Local protein synthesis plays an essential role in the regulation of various aspects of axonal and dendritic function in adult neurons. At present, however, there is no direct evidence that local protein translation is functionally contributing to neuronal outgrowth. Here, we identified the mRNA encoding the actin-binding protein β-thymosin as one of the most abundant transcripts in neurites of outgrowing neurons in culture. β-Thymosin mRNA is not evenly distributed in neurites, but appears to accumulate at distinct sites such as turning points and growth cones. Using double-stranded RNA knockdown, we show that reducing β-thymosin mRNA levels results in a significant increase in neurite outgrowth, both in neurites of intact cells and in isolated neurites. Together, our data demonstrate that local synthesis of β-thymosin is functionally involved in regulating neuronal outgrowth.
Nutraceuticals in cognitive impairment and Alzheimer’s disease

Several chemical substances belonging to classes of natural dietary origin display protective properties against some age-related diseases including neurodegenerative ones, particularly Alzheimer’s disease (AD). These compounds, known as nutraceuticals, differ structurally, act therefore at different biochemical and metabolic levels and have shown different types of neuroprotective properties. The aim of this review is to summarize data from observational studies, clinical trials, and randomized clinical trials (RCTs) in humans on the effects of selected nutraceuticals against age-related cognitive impairment and dementia. We report results from studies on flavonoids, some vitamins and other natural substances that have been studied in AD and that might be beneficial for the maintenance of a good cognitive performance. Due to the substantial lack of high-level evidence studies there is no possibility for recommendation of nutraceuticals in dementia-related therapeutic guidelines. Nevertheless, the strong potential for their neuroprotective action warrants further studies in the field.
ICT as cultural capital: The relationship between socioeconomic status and the computer-use profile of young people

This study explores the relationship between socioeconomic status (SES) and the computer-use profile of 1241 school students in Flanders, the northern region of Belgium. More specifically, the article examines whether varying patterns of computer access, attitudes, competencies and uses can be seen as constituting differences in cultural capital. Additionally, gender was included in the survey as an important background characteristic in digital divide research. Path analysis was used to model the complex relationships between the influencing factors upon the ICT-related variables. What emerged from the analyses was that SES affects the computer-use profile only moderately. No relationship between SES and computer ownership was found. Moreover, the acquisition of ICT competencies can no longer be attributed to computer ownership. Apart from a small effect on ICT use (a higher SES tends to be associated with more ICT use), SES does not seem to affect the computer-use profile of young people in Flanders. The results of this study indicate that the existing differences in SES on computer-use profile are not sufficiently marked to deduce that ICT can be seen as an indicator of differing cultural capital.
A Note on Scale Functions and the Time Value of Ruin for Lévy Insurance Risk Processes

We examine discounted penalties at ruin for surplus dynamics driven by a general spectrally negative Levy process; the natural class of stochastic processes which contains many examples of risk processes which have already been considered in the existing literature. Following from the important contributions of [Zhou, X. , 2005. On a classical risk model with a constant dividend barrier. North Am. Act. J. 95-108] we provide an explicit characterization of a generalized version of the Gerber-Shiu function in terms of scale functions, streamlining and extending results available in the literature.
How Noisy Social Media Text, How Diffrnt Social Media Sources?

While various claims have been made about text in social media text being noisy, there has never been a systematic study to investigate just how linguistically noisy or otherwise it is over a range of social media sources. We explore this question empirically over popular social media text types, in the form of YouTube comments, Twitter posts, web user forum posts, blog posts and Wikipedia, which we compare to a reference corpus of edited English text. We first extract out various descriptive statistics from each data type (including the distribution of languages, average sentence length and proportion of out-ofvocabulary words), and then investigate the proportion of grammatical sentences in each, based on a linguistically-motivated parser. We also investigate the relative similarity between different data types.
Kinetics Feasibility Study of Alcohol Sulfate Esterification Reactions in Tropospheric Aerosols

Sulfate esters have recently been identified in the secondary organic aerosol (SOA) formed in the photooxidation of biogenic hydrocarbons both in laboratory and under ambient atmospheric conditions. In the present study, the kinetics feasibility of direct reactions between alcohols and sulfuric acid to form sulfate esters in aerosol particles is explored. Nuclear magnetic resonance methods were used to monitor the bulk reaction kinetics of sulfate esterification reactions for a number of simple alcohols. The experiments were carried out at various sulfuric acid concentrations and a range of temperatures in order to estimate the rate constants of such reactions in aerosols under the previously studied laboratory conditions and under ambient atmospheric conditions. The measured rate constants did not depend greatly on the identity of the reactant alcohol, but increased strongly as a function of the sulfuric acid concentration, as predicted by excess acidity theory. Because of the strong temperature dependence of the rate constants for the direct reaction of alcohols with sulfuric acid, it appears that these reactions are kinetically infeasible for low temperature upper tropospheric sulfuric aerosols. For lower tropospheric SOA, it appears that the aerosol acidity is rarely high enough such that these reactions are likely to be responsible for the presence of sulfate esters in SOA.
A DEA -CASCOR MODEL FOR HIGH - FREQUENCY STOCK TRADING : COMPUTATIONAL EXPERIMENTS IN THE U.S. STOCK MARKET

The paper presents results of computer-assisted portfolio management simulation based on using a DEACascor mathematical model. The model uses the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) ratio as a neuron with memory and combines it with Cascade Correlation Neural Network (Cascor) to forecast stock prices. The model is designed for using in high-frequency stock trading. It utilizes ability of DEA to concentrate multi-faceted information in one indicator scaled to the interval [0,1], a DEA efficiency index, and is aimed to compress market information. Cascor combines data of several consecutive periods using its flexible structure and generates a buy - sell strategy. The paper presents results of the simulation of a 50-stock portfolio during a period of 60 consecutive trade days chosen during one of the most problematic period of the U.S. stock market operation. Obtained results allow for optimism regarding its practical use for high-frequency stock trading provided availability of a convenient computer – based support.
Teaching a Child With ASD to Approach Communication Partners and Use a Speech-Generating Device Across Settings: Clinic, School, and Home

Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often have difficulty generalizing newly acquired communication skills to different contexts. In this study, a multiple baseline across settings (clinic, school, and home) design was used to determine whether an 8-year-old boy with ASD could learn to approach communication partners to request preferred items using an iPad®-based speech-generating device (SGD). Results indicated that the participant learned to approach communication partners to request across all settings. Acquisition of this skill was fastest at school and slowest in the clinic. The participant’s learning generalized to a novel room within the same setting, and he was also able to retrieve the SGD prior to approaching the communication partner without additional teaching. Results suggest that individuals with ASD may benefit from being systematically taught to use an SGD across different settings and communication partners.
On IO-efficient viewshed algorithms and their accuracy

Given a terrain T and a point v, the viewshed or visibility map of v is the set of points in T that are visible from v. To decide whether a point p is visible one needs to interpolate the elevation of the terrain along the line-of-sight (LOS) vp. Existing viewshed algorithms differ widely in which and how many points they chose to interpolate, how many lines-of-sight they consider, and how they interpolate the terrain. These choices crucially affect the running time and accuracy of the algorithms. In this paper our goal was to obtain an IO-efficient algorithm that computes the viewshed on a grid terrain with as much accuracy as possible given the resolution of the data. We describe two algorithms which are based on computing and merging horizons, and we prove that the complexity of horizons on a grid of n points is O(n), improving on the general O(nα(n)) bound on triangulated terrains. Our finding is that, in practice, horizons on grids are significantly smaller than their theoretical worst case bound, which makes horizon-based approaches very fast. To measure the differences between viewsheds computed with various algorithms we implement an error metric that averages differences over a large number of viewsheds computed from a set of viewpoints with topological significance, like valleys and ridges. Using this metric we compare our current approach, Van Kreveld's model used in our previous work [7], the algorithm of Ferreira et al. [6], and the viewshed module r.los in the open source GIS GRASS.
Cold Pool and Precipitation Responses to Aerosol Loading: Modulation by Dry Layers

AbstractThe relative sensitivity of midlatitude deep convective precipitation to aerosols and midlevel dry layers has been investigated in this study using high-resolution cloud-resolving model simulations. Nine simulations, including combinations of three moisture profiles and three aerosol number concentration profiles, were performed. Because of the veering wind profile of the initial sounding, the convection splits into a left-moving storm that is multicellular in nature and a right-moving storm, a supercell, which are analyzed separately.The results demonstrate that while changes to the moisture profile always induce larger changes in precipitation than do variations in aerosol concentrations, multicells are sensitive to aerosol perturbations whereas supercells are less so. The multicellular precipitation sensitivity arises through aerosol impacts on the cold pool forcing. It is shown that the altitude of the dry layer influences whether cold pools are stronger or weaker and hence whether precipitati.
To learn representativeness of video frames

With the rapid explosion of video data, compact representation of videos is becoming more and more desirable for efficient browsing and communication, which leads to a number of research works on video summarization in recent years. Among these works, summaries based on a set of still frames are frequently studied and applied due to its high compactness. However, the representativeness of the selected frames, which are taken as the compact representation of the video or video segment, has not been well studied. It is observed that frame representativeness is highly related to the following elements: image quality, user attention measure, visual details, and displaying duration. It is also observed that users have similar tendency in selecting the most representative frame for a certain video segment. In this paper, we developed a method to examine and evaluate the representativeness of video frames based on learning users' perceptive evaluations.
Hyperspectral image classification incorporating bacterial foraging-optimized spectral weighting

The present paper describes the development of a hyperspectral image classification scheme using support vector machines (SVM) with spectrally weighted kernels. The kernels are designed during the training phase of the SVM using optimal spectral weights estimated using the Bacterial Foraging Optimization (BFO) algorithm, a popular modern stochastic optimization algorithm. The optimized kernel functions are then in the SVM paradigm for bi-classification of pixels in hyperspectral images. The effectiveness of the proposed approach is demonstrated by implementing it on three widely used benchmark hyperspectral data sets, two of which were taken over agricultural sites at Indian Pines, Indiana, and Salinas Valley, California, by the Airborne Visible Infra-Red Imaging Spectrometer (AVIRIS) at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The third dataset was acquired using the Reflective Optical System Imaging Spectrometer (ROSIS) over an urban scene at Pavia University, Italy to demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed approach in an urban scenario as well as with agricultural data. Classification errors for One-Against-One (OAO) and classification accuracies for One-Against-All (OAA) schemes were computed and compared to other methods developed in recent times. Finally, the use of the BFO-based technique is recommended owing to its superior performance, in comparison to other contemporary stochastic bio-inspired algorithms.
A detailed router for field-programmable gate arrays

The course graph expansion (CGE) detailed routing algorithm is presented for FPGAs (field-programmable gate arrays). The algorithm has the ability to resolve routing conflicts by considering the side-effects of one connection on another, and can be used over a wide range of FPGA interconnection architectures. CGE has been used to obtain excellent routing results for several industrial circuits with various FPGA routing architectures. The results show that CGE is able to route relatively large FPGAs in the absolute minimum number of tracks as determined by global routing, and that CGE has a linear run-time over circuit size. <<ETX>>
Acute downregulation of connexin43 at wound sites leads to a reduced inflammatory response, enhanced keratinocyte proliferation and wound fibroblast migration

Experimental downregulation of connexin43 (Cx43) expression at skin wound sites appears to markedly improve the rate and quality of healing, but the underlying mechanisms are currently unknown. Here, we have compared physiological and cell biological aspects of the repair process with and without Cx43 antisense oligodeoxynucleotide treatment. Treated wounds exhibited accelerated skin healing with significantly increased keratinocyte and fibroblast proliferation and migration. In vitro knockdown of Cx43 in a fibroblast wound-healing model also resulted in significantly faster healing, associated with increased mRNA for TGF-β1, and collagen α1 and general collagen content at the wound site. Treated wounds showed enhanced formation of granulation tissue and maturation with more rapid angiogenesis, myofibroblast differentiation and wound contraction appeared to be advanced by 2-3 days. Recruitment of both neutrophils and macrophages was markedly reduced within treated wounds, concomitant with reduced leukocyte infiltration. In turn, mRNA levels of CC chemokine ligand 2 and TNF-α were reduced in the treated wound. These data suggest that, by reducing Cx43 protein with Cx43-specific antisense oligodeoxynucleotides at wound sites early in the skin healing process repair is enhanced, at least in part, by accelerating cell migration and proliferation, and by attenuating inflammation and the additional damage it can cause.
Applying the jet feedback mechanism to core-collapse supernova explosions

I examine a mechanism by which two fast narrow jets launched by a newly formed neutron star (NS), or a black hole (BH), at the centre of a core-collapse supernova (CCSN), form two slow massive wide (SMW) jets. Such SMW jets are assumed as initial conditions in some numerical simulations that demonstrate that SMW jets can expel the rest of the collapsing star. The original fast narrow jets must deposit their energy inside the star via shock waves and form two hot bubbles that accelerate a much larger mass to form SMW jets. To prevent the jets from penetrating through the still infalling gas and escape instead of forming the hot bubbles, the jets should encounter fresh infalling gas. This condition is met if the jet's axis changes its direction. The exact condition is derived. In addition, to maintain a small neutrino cooling the fast narrow jets must be shocked at a distance r ≳ 10 3 km from the core, such that most of the post-shock energy is in radiation, and temperature is not too high. The scenario proposed here was shown to be able to suppress star formation in newly formed galaxies, and in forming SMW jets in cooling flow clusters of galaxies and in planetary nebulae. Namely, I suggest that NSs (or BHs) at the centre of CCSNe shut off their own growth and expel the rest of the mass available for accretion using the same mechanism by which supermassive BHs shut off their own growth, as well as that of their host bulge, in young galaxies.
Intersection theory on the moduli space of holomorphic curves with Lagrangian boundary conditions

We define a new family of open Gromov-Witten type invariants based on intersection theory on the moduli space of pseudoholomorphic curves of arbitrary genus with boundary in a Lagrangian submanifold. We assume the Lagrangian submanifold arises as the fixed points of an anti-symplectic involution and has dimension 2 or 3. In the strongly semi-positive genus 0 case, the new invariants coincide with Welschinger's invariant counts of real pseudoholomorphic curves. Furthermore, we calculate the new invariant for the real quintic threefold in genus 0 and degree 1 to be 30.
Death of a child: Perspective of Chinese mothers in Singapore

ABSTRACT The grief of Chinese mothers is examined in a phenomenological exploratory study. Grieving for the deceased child is moderated by diverse Chinese religious beliefs intertwined with cultural practices. Five aspects of grieving include giving meaning to the child’s life and death, quality and assurance of the afterlife, the function of crying, and a continuing bond. Extrapolating from the mothers’ grieving are questions related to the implications of children’s death for other family members and the significance of the interconnectedness of the self, others, the environment and the universe in processing a crisis through religion and spirituality in multicultural social work.
MEMORANDUM No 36 / 2001 The neighbourhood is not what it used to be : Has there been equalisation of opportunity across families and communities in Norway ?

Parents influence their children’s adult outcomes through economic and genetic endowments, transmission of cultural values and social skills, and through choice of residential location. Using a variance decomposition framework which provides bounds on the effect of families and neighbourhoods, we find important effects of family characteristics as well as residential location on educational attainment and adult earnings in Norway. Families are more important than neighbourhoods as the correlations among siblings are significantly higher than among children growing up in the same local community. Sibling correlations are estimated to be a little lower than for the US, while correlations between neighbourhood children in Norway are found to be significantly weaker than in the US. Unlike previous studies, we also assess changes over time by studying children growing up around 1960 and 1970. While family effects are permanent over time, the impact of neighbourhoods is reduced by half in size from 1960 to 1970 and we link this result to several policy changes in the 1960s aimed at increasing equality of opportunity in Norway. Our results differ from previous US studies, suggesting that the role of families and neighbourhoods in explaining the degree of equality of opportunity and social mobility depends on labour market institutions and redistributive policies.
Loading intensity of jumping exercises in post‐menopausal women: Implications for osteogenic training

Post‐menopausal women frequently exhibit low bone mineral density, and therefore, evidence‐based exercises that induce osteogenic loading and prevent osteoporosis are often essential. The purpose of this study was to investigate the loading intensity of 3 different jumping exercises in post‐menopausal women. Fourteen post‐menopausal women participated in this study and completed a series of countermovement jumps, drop jumps, and hard landings. A full‐body kinematic and kinetic analysis was performed to estimate the load intensity. Peak hip extensor moment and rate of moment change were significantly greater (P < .05; η2 = 0.483‐0.693) in the first landing of the drop jump than the countermovement jump and hard landing. Hip stiffness approached significance (P = .067), while peak vertical ground reaction force, vertical ground reaction force loading rate, and vertical ground reaction force index (peak*loading rate) were significantly greater (P < .01; η2 = 0.259‐0.864) during the hard landing. The drop jump and hard landing appear to generate the greatest loads at the highest rates and therefore are likely to have the largest osteogenic impact. Thus, future rehabilitation programs aimed at enhancing osteogenesis in post‐menopausal women are encouraged to include these easily implemented jumping exercises.
GLUT-1 overexpression as an unfavorable prognostic biomarker in patients with colorectal cancer

Background Glucose transporter-1 (GLUT-1) exhibits altered expression in colorectal cancer (CRC). The aim of this study was to explore the association between GLUT-1 and survival conditions, as well as clinical features in CRC by meta-analysis. Materials and Methods Relevant studies were searched through predefined strategies, hazard ratios (HRs), odds ratios (ORs), and their 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were used as effective measures. Results A total of 14 studies with 2,077 patients were included in this meta-analysis. The results showed that GLUT-1 was not significantly associated with overall survival (OS) (HR=1.28, 95% CI=0.86–1.91, p=0.22) or disease-free survival (DFS) (HR=1.71, 95% CI=0.78–3.72, p=0.179). However, subgroup analysis indicated that GLUT-1 was a significant biomarker for poor DFS in rectal cancer (HR=2.47, 95% CI=1.21–5.05, p=0.013). GLUT-1 expression was also found to be significantly correlated with the presence of lymph node metastasis (n=8, OR=2.14, 95% CI=1.66–2.75, p<0.001), T stage (n=6, OR=1.73, 95% CI=1.17–2.58, p=0.007), higher Dukes stage (n=5, OR=2.92, 95% CI=2.16–3.95, p<0.001), female sex (n=4, OR=2.92, 95% CI=2.16–3.95, p<0.001), and presence of liver metastasis (n=3, OR=1.82, 95% CI=1.06–3.12, p=0.03). Conclusion In conclusion, this meta-analysis showed that GLUT-1 was associated with poor DFS in rectal cancer (RC). Furthermore, GLUT-1 was also an indicator of aggressive clinical features in CRC.