Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Identification of synaptotagmin effectors via acute inhibition of secretion from cracked PC12 cells

T he synaptotagmins (syts) are a family of membrane proteins proposed to regulate membrane traffic in neuronal and nonneuronal cells. In neurons, the Ca2+-sensing ability of syt I is critical for fusion of docked synaptic vesicles with the plasma membrane in response to stimulation. Several putative Ca2+–syt effectors have been identified, but in most cases the functional significance of these interactions remains unknown. Here, we have used recombinant C2 domains derived from the cytoplasmic domains of syts I–XI to interfere with endogenous syt–effector interactions during Ca2+-triggered exocytosis from cracked PC12 cells. Inhibition was closely correlated with syntaxin–SNAP-25 and phosphatidylinositol 4,5-bisphosphate (PIP2)–binding activity. Moreover, we measured the expression levels of endogenous syts in PC12 cells; the major isoforms are I and IX, with trace levels of VII. As expected, if syts I and IX function as Ca2+ sensors, fragments from these isoforms blocked secretion. These data suggest that syts trigger fusion via their Ca2+-regulated interactions with t-SNAREs and PIP2, target molecules known to play critical roles in exocytosis.
Anthropology and Migration: Essays on Transnationalism, Ethnicity, and Identity

Chapter 1 Introduction: Anthropology, Migration, and the Portuguese Diaspora Part 2 PART I. Situating the Anthropological Perspective: Macro, Meso, and Micro Approaches to the Study of Migration Chapter 3 1. The Emigrant, the Nation, and the State in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Portugal: An Anthropological Perspective Chapter 4 2. Migration Stories: Agency and the Individual in the Study of Immigration Part 5 PART II: Return Migration, Transmigrants, and Transnationalism Chapter 6 3. Emigrar para Voltar: A Portuguese Ideology of Return Migration Chapter 7 4. Emigration, the Church, and the Religious Festival in Northern Portugal Part 8 PART III: Cities, Immigrant Communities, and Ethnic Identity Chapter 9 5. Is the Ethnic Community Inevitable? : A Comparison of the Settlement Patterns of Portuguese Immigrants in Toronto and Paris Chapter 10 6. Ethnicity and Entrepreneurs: Portuguese Immigrants in a Canadian City Part 11 PART IV: Gender and Migration Chapter 12 7. Emigration and Household Structure in a Portuguese Parish, 1850-1920 Chapter 13 8. Women are Migrants, Too: A Portuguese Perspective Chapter 14 9. Conclusion: Toward a Comparative Understanding of Migration Chapter 15 References
Statistical Machine Translation Improves Question Retrieval in Community Question Answering via Matrix Factorization

Community question answering (CQA) has become an increasingly popular research topic. In this paper, we focus on the problem of question retrieval. Question retrieval in CQA can automatically find the most relevant and recent questions that have been solved by other users. However, the word ambiguity and word mismatch problems bring about new challenges for question retrieval in CQA. State-of-the-art approaches address these issues by implicitly expanding the queried questions with additional words or phrases using monolingual translation models. While useful, the effectiveness of these models is highly dependent on the availability of quality parallel monolingual corpora (e.g., question-answer pairs) in the absence of which they are troubled by noise issue. In this work, we propose an alternative way to address the word ambiguity and word mismatch problems by taking advantage of potentially rich semantic information drawn from other languages. Our proposed method employs statistical machine translation to improve question retrieval and enriches the question representation with the translated words from other languages via matrix factorization. Experiments conducted on a real CQA data show that our proposed approach is promising.
How Tendons Buffer Energy Dissipation by Muscle

To decelerate the body and limbs, muscles lengthen actively to dissipate energy. During rapid energy-dissipating events, tendons buffer the work done on muscle by storing elastic energy temporarily, then releasing this energy to do work on the muscle. This elastic mechanism may reduce the risk of muscle damage by reducing peak forces and lengthening rates of active muscle
Deterministic skip lists

We explore techniques based on the notion of a skip list to guarantee logarithmic search, insert and delete costs. The basic idea is to insist that between any pair of elements above a given height are a small number of elements of precisely that height. The desired behaviour can be achieved by either using some extra space for pointers, or by adding the constraint that the physical sizes of the nodes be exponentially increasing. The first approach leads to simpler code, whereas the second is ideally suited to a buddy system of memory allocation. Our techniques are competitive in terms of time and space with balanced tree schemes, and, we feel, inherently simpler when taken from first principles.
Structural Basis for Substrate Recognition in the Salicylic Acid Carboxyl Methyltransferase Family Article, publication date, and citation information can be found at www.plantcell.org/cgi/doi/10.1105/tpc.014548.

Recently, a novel family of methyltransferases was identified in plants. Some members of this newly discovered and recently characterized methyltransferase family catalyze the formation of small-molecule methyl esters using S-adenosyl-l-Met (SAM) as a methyl donor and carboxylic acid–bearing substrates as methyl acceptors. These enzymes include SAMT (SAM:salicylic acid carboxyl methyltransferase), BAMT (SAM:benzoic acid carboxyl methyltransferase), and JMT (SAM:jasmonic acid carboxyl methyltransferase). Moreover, other members of this family of plant methyltransferases have been found to catalyze the N-methylation of caffeine precursors. The 3.0-Å crystal structure of Clarkia breweri SAMT in complex with the substrate salicylic acid and the demethylated product S-adenosyl-l-homocysteine reveals a protein structure that possesses a helical active site capping domain and a unique dimerization interface. In addition, the chemical determinants responsible for the selection of salicylic acid demonstrate the structural basis for facile variations of substrate selectivity among functionally characterized plant carboxyl-directed and nitrogen-directed methyltransferases and a growing set of related proteins that have yet to be examined biochemically. Using the three-dimensional structure of SAMT as a guide, we examined the substrate specificity of SAMT by site-directed mutagenesis and activity assays against 12 carboxyl-containing small molecules. Moreover, the utility of structural information for the functional characterization of this large family of plant methyltransferases was demonstrated by the discovery of an Arabidopsis methyltransferase that is specific for the carboxyl-bearing phytohormone indole-3-acetic acid.
Disorders of Consciousness

The vegetative state and other so‐called disorders of consciousness present some of the most significant practical and ethical challenges in modern medicine. It is extremely difficult to assess residual cognitive function in these patients because their movements may be minimal or inconsistent, or because no cognitive output may be possible. In recent years, behavioral and neuroimaging techniques developed within the cognitive neurosciences have provided a number of new approaches for investigating these disorders, leading to significant advances in current understanding. In several cases, residual cognitive function and even conscious awareness have been demonstrated in patients who are assumed to be vegetative yet retain cognitive abilities that have evaded detection using standard clinical methods. In this article, I review these data, focusing primarily on the vegetative and minimally conscious states.
Induction chemotherapy and dose intensification of the radiation boost in locally advanced anal canal carcinoma: final analysis of the randomized UNICANCER ACCORD 03 trial.

PURPOSE Concomitant radiochemotherapy (RCT) is the standard for locally advanced anal canal carcinoma (LAACC). Questions regarding the role of induction chemotherapy (ICT) and a higher radiation dose in LAACC are pending. Our trial was designed to determine whether dose escalation of the radiation boost or two cycles of ICT before concomitant RCT lead to an improvement in colostomy-free survival (CFS). PATIENTS AND METHODS Patients with tumors ≥ 40 mm, or < 40 mm and N1-3M0 were randomly assigned to one of four treatment arms: (A) two ICT cycles (fluorouracil 800 mg/m(2)/d intravenous [IV] infusion, days 1 through 4 and 29 to 32; and cisplatin 80 mg/m(2) IV, on days 1 and 29), RCT (45 Gy in 25 fractions over 5 weeks, fluorouracil and cisplatin during weeks 1 and 5), and standard-dose boost (SD; 15 Gy); (B) two ICT cycles, RCT, and high-dose boost (HD; 20-25 Gy); (C): RCT and SD boost (reference arm); and (D) RCT and HD boost. RESULTS Two hundred eighty-three of 307 patients achieved full treatment. With a median follow-up period of 50 months, the 5-year CFS rates were 69.6%, 82.4%, 77.1%, and 72.7% in arms A, B, C, and D, respectively. Considering the 2 × 2 factorial analysis, the 5-year CFS was 76.5% versus 75.0% (P = .37) in groups A and B versus C and D, respectively (ICT effect), and 73.7% versus 77.8% in groups A and C versus B and D, respectively (RT-dose effect; P = .067). CONCLUSION Using CFS as our main end point, we did not find an advantage for either ICT or HD radiation boost in LAACC. Nevertheless, the results of the most treatment-intense arm B should prompt the design of further intensification studies.
Inquiry, data, and understanding : a search for meaning in educational research

Acknowledgements Preface Chapter 1 The Double Mirrors of School Improvement: The Aga Khan Foundation in East Africa Stephen E. Anderson Chapter 2 Evolution in School Improvement with the Aga Khan Foundation, from 1984 to 2000 Jeremy Greenland Chapter 3 Building Professional Community at Mzizima Secondary School, Tanzania Stephen E. Anderson and Suleman Sumra Chapter 4 Conflict Between National Curriculum Standards and Efforts to Improve Teaching Joanne Capper, Shelom Nderitu and Paul Ogula Chapter 5 Supporting Child-Centered Teaching under Universal Primary Education in Kampala, Uganda Iram Siraj-Blatchford, Matthew Odada and Martin Omagor Chapter 6 Decentralized Partnerships for School-Based Teacher Development in Mombasa, Kenya Stephen E. Anderson and Shelom Nderitu Chapter 7 Incentive Grants, Management Training, and Teacher Change in Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania Geoff Welford and Herme Mosha Chapter 8 Curriculum Materials and In-Service Training for English-Medium Instruction in Zanzibar Ann Brumfit and H. R. H. Hikmany Chapter 9 The Aga Khan Foundation Experience Compared with Emerging Alternatives to Formal Schooling Joseph P. Farrell Chapter 10 The Aga Khan Foundation School Improvement Initiative: An International Change Perspective David Hopkins Notes References Contributors Index
A Just-in-Time Customizable processor

A traditional extensible processor with customized circuits achieves high performance at the cost of flexibility, while a dynamically extensible processor with reconfigurable fabric offers flexibility for instruction-set extensions (ISEs) but suffers from computational inefficiency. We introduce a novel architecture called Just-in-Time Customizable (JiTC) processor that reconciles the conflicting demands of performance and flexibility in extensible processors. Our key innovation is a multi-stage accelerator, called Specialized Functional Unit (SFU), that is tightly integrated in the processor pipeline. The SFU design is derived through a systematic study of a large range of representative embedded applications. The SFU can be reconfigured on per-cycle basis to support different application-specific instructions at near-ideal performance of an extensible processor. We also provide an automated compilation tool chain for JiTC processor. The experimental results confirm the efficiency and applicability of our approach.
Social Support across Source and Context: Implications for Well-Being during Adolescence and Young Adulthood

Social relationships have great implications for well-being. Positive interpersonal exchanges, such as social support, can be beneficial in buffering the detrimental effects of distress on physiological systems (neuroendocrine, immune, cardiovascular) implicated in the development of chronic diseases. However, characteristics of the support recipient (age, culture), provider (parent vs. peers, Study 1), and context (face-to-face vs. computer-mediated, Study 2) may play a role in shaping the effects of support. The studies in this dissertation examined these factors. Study 1 examined how social support from parents and friends differentially moderated the association between depressive symptoms, hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis activity and inflammation among adolescents (N = 316, Mage = 16.40, SD = .74; 57% female) from diverse backgrounds (23.1% Asian, 29.1% European, 41.8% Latino, and 6.0% other). Results indicated that parent support, but not friend support, moderated the link of depressive symptoms to both total daily cortisol output (a measure of neuroendocrine, HPA activity) and C-reactive protein (a marker of inflammation associated with cardiovascular disease risk). These patterns did not differ by ethnicity. Overall, Study 1 highlights the continued, and perhaps accumulated, importance of parents despite increasing needs for autonomy from and exploration outside of the family unit during adolescence. Study 2 examined how computer-mediated support relative to face-to-face support differentially affects stress reactivity among young adult females (N=103; Mage=19.91, SD=1.91) from Asian (n = 59) compared to non-Asian backgrounds (e.g., African American, European American, Latino, mixed-heritage, n = 44). Participants who received support from a friend through instant messenger before a stressful lab task reported less state anxiety afterward compared to those who did not receive support. Additionally, HPA reactivity across conditions was moderated by ethnicity. Specifically, participants from non-Asian backgrounds who received support face-to-face exhibited less cortisol output throughout the study session compared to their counterparts who received support through instant messenger or not at all. There were no significant differences in cortisol output across all conditions for Asian Americans and no differences were observed for cardiovascular reactivity (heart rate, blood pressure) for all participants. So although new technologies are providing new contexts for social connection, cultural differences in response to in-person support may be reproduced in digital mediums.
Carnitine palmitoyltransferase 1: Central to cell function

INTRODUCTION A sentinel paper in 1977 described the inhibition of the oxidation of fatty acids by isolated mitochondria by malonyl-CoA in vitro and its correlation with the inhibition of the ‘‘outer’’ CPT activity that could be measured in intact, well-coupled mitochondria (1, 2). This explained the ability of some tissues to perform high rates of both fatty acid synthesis or oxidation under separate physiological conditions. Malonyl-CoA, an intermediate of fatty acid synthesis, through inhibition of the ‘‘ratelimiting’’ step of fatty acid oxidation, ensures that the two processes would not occur simultaneously. The inhibition of CPT 1 by malonyl-CoA is crucial because it is the point at which metabolism of fatty acids and glucose come into the most direct ‘‘contact’’ to influence each other’s metabolism. Other interactions, such as the inhibition of phosphofructokinase by citrate, the provision of glucose-derived glycerol for acylglyceride synthesis, the regulation of pyruvate dehydrogenase activity by fatty acid-derived acetyl-CoA, do not have the same ability to affect the continuous substrate selection that tissues have to make primarily between glucose and fatty acid oxidation.
$rm K$-SVD: An Algorithm for Designing Overcomplete Dictionaries for Sparse Representation

In recent years there has been a growing interest in the study of sparse representation of signals. Using an overcomplete dictionary that contains prototype signal-atoms, signals are described by sparse linear combinations of these atoms. Applications that use sparse representation are many and include compression, regularization in inverse problems, feature extraction, and more. Recent activity in this field has concentrated mainly on the study of pursuit algorithms that decompose signals with respect to a given dictionary. Designing dictionaries to better fit the above model can be done by either selecting one from a prespecified set of linear transforms or adapting the dictionary to a set of training signals. Both of these techniques have been considered, but this topic is largely still open. In this paper we propose a novel algorithm for adapting dictionaries in order to achieve sparse signal representations. Given a set of training signals, we seek the dictionary that leads to the best representation for each member in this set, under strict sparsity constraints. We present a new method-the K-SVD algorithm-generalizing the K-means clustering process. K-SVD is an iterative method that alternates between sparse coding of the examples based on the current dictionary and a process of updating the dictionary atoms to better fit the data. The update of the dictionary columns is combined with an update of the sparse representations, thereby accelerating convergence. The K-SVD algorithm is flexible and can work with any pursuit method (e.g., basis pursuit, FOCUSS, or matching pursuit). We analyze this algorithm and demonstrate its results both on synthetic tests and in applications on real image data
A new traffic separation mechanism (TSm) in wireless 802.11e networks: a simulation study

Wireless Local Area Networks (WLAN) has attracted significant interest to support real-time communication. The most promising solution was recently published as IEEE 802.11e, which provide traffic differentiation. However, that solution still has an inadequate behavior to support real-time applications. In this paper, we propose a new traffic separation mechanism for IEEE 802.11e networks. Such Traffic Separation Mechanism (TSm) allows the coexistence of CSMA standard stations with modified (real-time) stations in the same network domain. We investigate the performance of TSm mechanism through computer simulations. We show the efectiveness of such scheme when the real-time traffic is kept at reduced loads or when we have only one producer real-time traffic station.
Diagnosis of spirochetal meningitis by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay and indirect immunofluorescence assay in serum and cerebrospinal fluid

The antibody response against a spirochetal strain isolated from Swedish Ixodes ricinus ticks was determined by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) and indirect immunofluorescence assay of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) and serum specimens from 45 patients with chronic meningitis. Samples of CSF, serum, or both from patients with various infections of the central nervous system, multiple sclerosis, syphilis, or infectious mononucleosis and from healthy individuals served as control samples. Probable spirochetal etiology could be demonstrated for 41 of 45 (91%) patients with clinical symptoms of chronic meningitis. Approximately 25% of the patients had significantly elevated titers of antibody to the spirochete in CSF but not in serum. The highest diagnostic sensitivity, 91%, was demonstrated by measurement of CSF antibodies and calculation of a spirochetal CSF titer index, which is the ratio of (ELISA titer in CSF/ELISA titer in serum) to (albumin in CSF/albumin in serum) and which also considers the degree of blood-CSF barrier damage. The highest specificity, 98%, was obtained by calculation of a CSF titer index. Patients with short duration of disease were especially prone to be antibody negative in serum but positive in CSF. Significant rise in serum antibody titers was seldom demonstrated in patients treated with antibiotics. It is concluded that measurement of CSF antibodies, especially by ELISA, is a highly sensitive and specific method for the immunological diagnosis of spirochetal meningitis.
Living Arrangements among the Chakhesang Elders

This paper assays an insight into the living arrangement among the Chakhesang elders, a tribal community in Nagaland, India. The study was conducted among 912 individuals with age ranging from 60-101 years. Living arrangements were compared with Standard of Living Index (SLI) for the purpose of understanding the socioeconomic status and Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS) for assessing the degree of depression among the elderly. It was found that, 17.9% of the elders reportedly live alone. Widowhood was the underlying factor which compelled the elders to live alone, both among the men (7.5%) and women (20.7%). Those who live alone belonged to the lowest level of the living index (88.4%) and experienced higher prevalence of depression (72.7%). On the other hand, the most prevalent type of living arrangement was the co-residential type. It was found that 63.3% of the elders were living with a child (including adopted children), child-in-law or grandchild. It was also revealed that, those who were co-residing with children experienced lesser depression and also enjoyed a better standard of living.
Chemotherapy with or without radiotherapy in limited-stage diffuse aggressive non-Hodgkin's lymphoma: Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group study 1484.

PURPOSE To compare low-dose (30 Gy) radiotherapy (RT) with observation (OBS) in limited-stage aggressive lymphoma patients achieving complete remission (CR) after chemotherapy, and to measure conversion from partial response (PR) to CR with high-dose (40 Gy) RT. PATIENTS AND METHODS From 1984 to 1992, stage I (with risk factors) and II adults with diffuse aggressive lymphoma in CR after eight cycles of cyclophosphamide, doxorubicin, vincristine, and prednisone (CHOP) were randomly assigned to 30 Gy involved-field RT or OBS. PR patients received 40 Gy RT. RESULTS Among 172 CR patients, the 6-year disease-free survival (DFS) was 73% for low-dose RT versus 56% for OBS (two-sided P = .05). Failure-free survival (two-sided P = .06), and time to progression (two-sided P = .06) also favored RT. Intent-to-treat analyses yielded similar results. No survival differences were observed. Three RT versus 15 OBS patients relapsed in initial disease sites. At 6 years, failure-free survival was 63% in PR patients; conversion to CR did not significantly influence clinical outcome. CONCLUSION For patients in CR after CHOP, low-dose RT prolonged DFS and provided local control, but no survival benefit was observed. The majority of PR patients were event-free at 6 years despite residual radiographic abnormalities. Future efforts should be directed toward improved imaging and more effective systemic therapies.