Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Transnationalism reloaded: the historical trajectory of a concept

ABSTRACT In this commentary, I discuss the importance of Portes, Guarnizo and Landolt’s article, focusing on three specific points. First, I argue that this 1999 article represented a turning point in transnational migration studies, in that it made it possible to address important weaknesses in this field of study. Second, I reflect on the article’s lack of reference to the nation-state and its power to shape transnational fields. Third, I argue that the cumulative knowledge gained over the last two decades – triggered in part by the claims of this 1999 article – have been steadily integrated into this field of investigation, rendering possible important theoretical alterations. These insights have made possible a shift towards a new stance, a transnational perspective whose specific epistemology makes it possible to develop explanatory frameworks for current transformation processes and to revise social theory more generally.
Unsupervised variational classification through image multi-thresholding

In this paper, we propose an improvement of the classical image multi-thresholding methods. The goal is to achieve the precise determination of homogeneous zones in numerical images by pixels classification. The thresholds and the modes are obtained by minimization of a new energy of gravitational clustering initialized with the significant peaks of a cumulated histogram. Then, the best modes and the best thresholds are calculated by alternate optimization of an energy of multi-thresholding, leading to a piecewise quadratic potential. This energy is built from a total uniformity criterion which measures the homogeneity of a given map of regions. Finally, an unsupervised classification is performed by use of a supervised variational classification approach which minimizes an adapted energy of transitions of phases. The potential which controls the classification process is built from the previously determined best thresholds and modes. The experimental study shows the efficiency and the robustness of the whole method.
Exosomes secreted from human colon cancer cells influence the adhesion of neighboring metastatic cells: Role of microRNA-210

ABSTRACT Cancer-secreted exosomes influence tumor microenvironment and support cancer growth and metastasis. MiR-210 is frequently up-regulated in colorectal cancer tissues and correlates with metastatic disease. We investigated whether exosomes are actively released by HCT-8 colon cancer cells, the role of exosomal miR-210 in the cross-talk between primary cancer cells and neighboring metastatic cells and its contribution in regulating epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) and mesenchymal-epithelial transition (MET). After 7 d of culture, a subpopulation of viable HCT-8 cells detached the monolayer and started to grow in suspension, suggesting anoikis resistance and a metastatic potential. The expression of key proteins of EMT revealed that these cells were E-cadherin negative and vimentin positive further confirming their metastatic phenotype and the acquisition of anoikis resistance. Metastatic cells, in the presence of adherently growing HCT-8, continued to grow in suspension whereas only if seeded in cell-free wells, were able to adhere again and to form E-cadherin positive and vimentin negative new colonies, suggesting the occurrence of MET. The chemosensitivity to 5 fluorouracil and to FOLFOX-like treatment of metastatic cells was significantly diminished compared to adherent HCT-8 cells. Of note, adherent new colonies undergoing MET, were insensitive to both chemotherapeutic strategies. Electron microscopy analysis demonstrated that adherently growing HCT-8, actually secreted exosomes and that exosomes in turn were taken up by metastatic cells. When exosomes secreted by adherently growing HCT-8 were administered to metastatic cells, MET was significantly inhibited. miR-210 was significantly upregulated in exosomes compared to its intracellular levels in adherently growing HCT-8 cells and correlated to anoikis resistance and EMT markers. Exosomes containing miR-210 might be considered as EMT promoting signals that preserve the local cancer-growth permissive milieu and also guide metastatic cells to free, new sites of dissemination.
In Good Shape: Robust People Detection based on Appearance and Shape

Robustly detecting people in real world scenes is a fundamental and challenging task in computer vision. State-of-the-art approaches use powerful learning methods and manually annotated image data. Importantly, these learning based approaches rely on the fact that the collected training data is representative of all relevant variations necessary to detect people. Rather than to collect and annotate ever more training data, this paper explores the possibility to use a 3D human shape and pose model from computer graphics to add relevant shape information to learn more powerful people detection models. By sampling from the space of 3D shapes we are able to control data variability while covering the major shape variations of humans which are often difficult to capture when collecting real-world training images. We evaluate our data generation method for a people detection model based on pictorial structures. As we show on a challenging multi-viewpoint dataset, the additional information contained in the 3D shape model helps to outperform models trained on image data alone (see e.g. Fig. 1).
Chapter 19 Genetic and Environmental Influences on Sexual Orientation

The primary focus of this chapter is to provide an overview of the evidence to date on the quantitative genetics of sexual orientation, including family and twin studies. The bulk of the available evidence suggests moderate heritability for male sexual orientation. Female sexual orientation has been studied much less extensively, but current studies are consistent with a genetic contribution for women as well (Kirk, Bailey, Dunne, & Martin, 2000; Pattatucci & Hamer, 1995). Familial aggregation has been reported in several family studies of both male and female homosexuality (Dawood & Bailey, 2000), although the genetic and environmental influences on this familial clustering have not been clearly defined by the largest twin studies published thus far, which have produced contradictory results. Recent molecular genetic studies will also be reviewed, including the two main strategies that have been used to date – linkage and association analysis. We will also discuss the implications of recent advances in molecular genetic studies.
Gastrointestinal Cell Lines Form Polarized Epithelia with an Adherent Mucus Layer when Cultured in Semi-Wet Interfaces with Mechanical Stimulation

Mucin glycoproteins are secreted in large quantities by mucosal epithelia and cell surface mucins are a prominent feature of the glycocalyx of all mucosal epithelia. Currently, studies investigating the gastrointestinal mucosal barrier use either animal experiments or non-in vivo like cell cultures. Many pathogens cause different pathology in mice compared to humans and the in vitro cell cultures used are suboptimal because they are very different from an in vivo mucosal surface, are often not polarized, lack important components of the glycocalyx, and often lack the mucus layer. Although gastrointestinal cell lines exist that produce mucins or polarize, human cell line models that reproducibly create the combination of a polarized epithelial cell layer, functional tight junctions and an adherent mucus layer have been missing until now. We trialed a range of treatments to induce polarization, 3D-organization, tight junctions, mucin production, mucus secretion, and formation of an adherent mucus layer that can be carried out using standard equipment. These treatments were tested on cell lines of intestinal (Caco-2, LS513, HT29, T84, LS174T, HT29 MTX-P8 and HT29 MTX-E12) and gastric (MKN7, MKN45, AGS, NCI-N87 and its hTERT Clone5 and Clone6) origins using Ussing chamber methodology and (immuno)histology. Semi-wet interface culture in combination with mechanical stimulation and DAPT caused HT29 MTX-P8, HT29 MTX-E12 and LS513 cells to polarize, form functional tight junctions, a three-dimensional architecture resembling colonic crypts, and produce an adherent mucus layer. Caco-2 and T84 cells also polarized, formed functional tight junctions and produced a thin adherent mucus layer after this treatment, but with less consistency. In conclusion, culture methods affect cell lines differently, and testing a matrix of methods vs. cell lines may be important to develop better in vitro models. The methods developed herein create in vitro mucosal surfaces suitable for studies of host-pathogen interactions at the mucosal surface.
Injury prevention strategies at the FIFA 2014 World Cup: perceptions and practices of the physicians from the 32 participating national teams

Purpose The available scientific research regarding injury prevention practices in international football is sparse. The purpose of this study was to quantify current practice with regard to (1) injury prevention of top-level footballers competing in an international tournament, and (2) determine the main challenges and issues faced by practitioners in these national teams. Methods A survey was administered to physicians of the 32 competing national teams at the FIFA 2014 World Cup. The survey included 4 sections regarding perceptions and practices concerning non-contact injuries: (1) risk factors, (2) screening tests and monitoring tools, (3) preventative strategies and (4) reflection on their experience at the World Cup. Results Following responses from all teams (100%), the present study revealed the most important intrinsic (previous injury, accumulated fatigue, agonist:antagonist muscle imbalance) and extrinsic (reduced recovery time, training load prior to and during World Cup, congested fixtures) risk factors during the FIFA 2014 World Cup. The 5 most commonly used tests for risk factors were: flexibility, fitness, joint mobility, balance and strength; monitoring tools commonly used were: medical screen, minutes/matches played, subjective and objective wellness, heart rate and biochemical markers. The 5 most important preventative exercises were: flexibility, core, combined contractions, balance and eccentric. Conclusions The present study showed that many of the National football (soccer) teams’ injury prevention perceptions and practices follow a coherent approach. There remains, however, a lack of consistent research findings to support some of these perceptions and practices.
Multi-objective parameter optimization of common land model using adaptive surrogate modeling

Parameter specification usually has significant influence on the performance of land surface models (LSMs). However, estimating the parameters properly is a challenging task due to the following reasons: (1) LSMs usually have too many adjustable parameters (20 to 100 or even more), leading to the curse of dimensionality in the parameter input space; (2) LSMs usually have many output variables involving water/energy/carbon cycles, so that calibrating LSMs is actually a multi-objective optimization problem; (3) Regional LSMs are expensive to run, while conventional multi-objective optimization methods need a large number of model runs (typically ~10 5 –10 6 ). It makes parameter optimization computationally prohibitive. An uncertainty quantification framework was developed to meet the aforementioned challenges, which include the following steps: (1) using parameter screening to reduce the number of adjustable parameters, (2) using surrogate models to emulate the responses of dynamic models to the variation of adjustable parameters, (3) using an adaptive strategy to improve the efficiency of surrogate modeling-based optimization; (4) using a weighting function to transfer multi-objective optimization to single-objective optimization. In this study, we demonstrate the uncertainty quantification framework on a single column application of a LSM – the Common Land Model (CoLM), and evaluate the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed framework. The result indicate that this framework can efficiently achieve optimal parameters in a more effective way. Moreover, this result implies the possibility of calibrating other large complex dynamic models, such as regional-scale LSMs, atmospheric models and climate models.
The IR Task at the CLEF eHealth Evaluation Lab 2016: User-centred Health Information Retrieval

This paper details the collection, systems and evaluation methods used in the IR Task of the CLEF 2016 eHealth Evaluation Lab. This task investigates the e↵ectiveness of web search engines in providing access to medical information for common people that have no or little medical knowledge. The task aims to foster advances in the development of search technologies for consumer health search by providing resources and evaluation methods to test and validate search systems. The problem considered in this year’s task was to retrieve web pages to support the information needs of health consumers that are faced by a medical condition and that want to seek relevant health information online through a search engine. As part of the evaluation exercise, we gathered 300 queries users posed with respect to 50 search task scenarios. The scenarios were developed from real cases of people seeking health information through posting requests of help on a web forum. The presence of query variations for a single scenario helped us capturing the variable quality at which queries are posed. Queries were created in English and then translated into other languages. A total of 49 runs by 10 different teams were submitted for the English query topics; 2 teams submitted 29 runs for the multilingual topics.
The Spontaneous Autoimmune Neuromyopathy in ICOSL−/− NOD Mice Is CD4+ T-Cell and Interferon-γ Dependent

Abrogation of ICOS/ICOS ligand (ICOSL) costimulation prevents the onset of diabetes in the non-obese diabetic (NOD) mouse but, remarkably, yields to the development of a spontaneous autoimmune neuromyopathy. At the pathological level, ICOSL−/− NOD mice show stronger protection from insulitis than their ICOS−/− counterparts. Also, the ICOSL−/− NOD model carries a limited C57BL/6 region containing the Icosl nul mutation, but, in contrast to ICOS−/− NOD mice, no gene variant previously reported as associated to NOD diabetes. Therefore, we aimed at providing a detailed characterization of the ICOSL−/− NOD model. The phenotype observed in ICOSL−/− NOD mice is globally similar to that observed in ICOS−/− and ICOS−/−ICOSL−/− double-knockout NOD mice, manifested by a progressive locomotor disability first affecting the front paws as observed by catwalk analysis and a decrease in grip test performance. The pathology remains limited to peripheral nerve and striated muscle. The muscle disease is characterized by myofiber necrosis/regeneration and an inflammatory infiltrate composed of CD4+ T-cells, CD8+ T-cells, and myeloid cells, resembling human myositis. Autoimmune neuromyopathy can be transferred to NOD.scid recipients by CD4+ but not by CD8+ T-cells isolated from 40-week-old female ICOSL−/− NOD mice. The predominant role of CD4+ T-cells is further demonstrated by the observation that neuromyopathy does not develop in CIITA−/−ICOSL−/− NOD in contrast to β2microglobulin−/−ICOSL−/− NOD mice. Also, the cytokine profile of CD4+ T-cells infiltrating muscle and nerve of ICOSL−/− NOD mice is biased toward a Th1 pattern. Finally, adoptive transfer experiments show that diabetes development requires expression of ICOSL, in contrast to neuromyopathy. Altogether, the deviation of autoimmunity from the pancreas to skeletal muscles in the absence of ICOS/ICOSL signaling in NOD mice is strictly dependent on CD4+ T-cells, leads to myofiber necrosis and regeneration. It provides the first mouse model of spontaneous autoimmune myopathy akin to human myositis.
A flow-sensitive analysis of privacy properties

In this paper we consider service oriented architectures where many components interact with one another using a wireless network. We are interested in questions like: ldr Can I be sure that I do not get unsolicited information from some service? - unless I give my permission? ldr Can I be sure that information I send to some service never is leaked to another service? - unless I give my permission? We shall develop a static program analysis for the pi- calculus and show how it can be used to give privacy guarantees like the ones requested above. The analysis records the explicit information flow of the system and keeps track of, not only the potential configurations of the system, but also the order in which they may be encountered.
Claves de la publicidad viral : de la motivación a la emoción en los vídeos más compartidos

Desde sus origenes a mediados de los noventa, la aplicacion del concepto de viralidad a la comunicacion comercial ha representado para las marcas una oportunidad para franquear las tradicionales barreras de la audiencia ante la publicidad y convertirla en transmisora activa de los mensajes de la marca. El marketing viral se basa, desde entonces, en dos principios basicos: ofrecer al individuo contenidos gratuitos y atractivos que disfrazan su finalidad comercial y usar un sistema de difusion de usuario en usuario. La transformacion del espectador pasivo en usuario activo que difunde mensajes de tipo publicitario promovidos por anunciantes, responde a una serie de necesidades y motivaciones de los individuos y a una serie de caracteristicas de los contenidos que han sido descritos por la investigacion previa en este campo, principalmente a traves de metodologias de tipo cuantitativo basadas en las percepciones de los usuarios. El presente articulo analiza, a traves de la metodologia del analisis de contenido, la presencia de los elementos que trabajos de investigacion anteriores han senalado como favorecedores de la accion de compartir en los 25 videos publicitarios virales con mas «shares» entre 2006 y 2013. Los resultados obtenidos muestran las caracteristicas mas comunes en este tipo de videos y la presencia destacada de la sorpresa y la alegria como emociones dominantes en los videos virales mas exitosos.
Large deviations and mixing for dissipative PDEs with unbounded random kicks

We study the problem of exponential mixing and large deviations for discrete-time Markov processes associated with a class of random dynamical systems. Under some dissipativity and regularisation hypotheses for the underlying deterministic dynamics and a non-degeneracy condition for the driving random force, we discuss the existence and uniqueness of a stationary measure and its exponential stability in the Kantorovich–Wasserstein metric. We next turn to the large deviations principle (LDP) and establish its validity for the occupation measures of the Markov processes in question. The proof is based on Kifer’s criterion for non-compact spaces, a result on large-time asymptotics for generalised Markov semigroup, and a coupling argument. These tools combined together constitute a new approach to LDP for infinite-dimensional processes without strong Feller property in a non-compact space. The results obtained can be applied to the two-dimensional Navier–Stokes system in a bounded domain and to the complex Ginzburg–Landau equation.
Single crewing in English and Welsh policing: frequency and associations with violence towards and injuries in officers

ABSTRACT There is limited contemporary evidence concerning whether single crewing – the deployment of unaccompanied police officers – presents a risk to officer safety. This exploratory self-report study examined the frequency of single crewing in England and Wales and associations with violence-related variables. Officers represented by the Police Federation of England and Wales contributed survey data on four forms of violent victimisation and injuries requiring medical attention arising from work-related violence experienced over the 12 months to February 2016. Respondents for whom crewing was applicable to their role indicated the frequency with which they had been single crewed during the same period. Pearson’s χ2 tests were used to characterise socio- and occupational-demographic factors associated with single crewing, violence, and injuries. Associations between single crewing frequency and the target variables were assessed using adjusted binary logistic regression to generate odds ratios and 95% confidence intervals. Among the 11,397 respondents who indicated that crewing was applicable to their role, 53% were often and 21% always single crewed. Relative to those who were never single crewed, the odds of being subjected to verbal insults and verbal threats were significantly elevated in officers who were often or always single crewed. The odds of physical attacks and injuries requiring medical attention were significantly elevated in officers who were always single crewed. There was no association between single crewing frequency and physical attacks with a weapon. These initial cross-sectional findings suggest that tailored crewing options might represent a means by which to reduce violence towards police officers.
Kinesin processivity is gated by phosphate release

Significance Kinesin-1 is a motor protein central to intracellular transport. Prevailing models of the kinesin mechanochemical cycle—which invoke docking of the neck linker domain upon ATP binding—fail to explain the remarkable processivity of kinesin, which represents a competition between dissociation from the microtubule and continuation of the stepping cycle. We show that kinesin dissociation, which characterizes the end of a processive run, is gated by phosphate release following ATP hydrolysis. The structural change driving kinesin motility, likely neck linker docking, is therefore completed only upon hydrolysis. Our results offer insights into gating mechanisms and necessitate revisions to existing models of the kinesin cycle. Kinesin-1 is a dimeric motor protein, central to intracellular transport, that steps hand-over-hand toward the microtubule (MT) plus-end, hydrolyzing one ATP molecule per step. Its remarkable processivity is critical for ferrying cargo within the cell: over 100 successive steps are taken, on average, before dissociation from the MT. Despite considerable work, it is not understood which features coordinate, or “gate,” the mechanochemical cycles of the two motor heads. Here, we show that kinesin dissociation occurs subsequent to, or concomitant with, phosphate (Pi) release following ATP hydrolysis. In optical trapping experiments, we found that increasing the steady-state population of the posthydrolysis ADP·Pi state (by adding free Pi) nearly doubled the kinesin run length, whereas reducing either the ATP binding rate or hydrolysis rate had no effect. The data suggest that, during processive movement, tethered-head binding occurs subsequent to hydrolysis, rather than immediately after ATP binding, as commonly suggested. The structural change driving motility, thought to be neck linker docking, is therefore completed only upon hydrolysis, and not ATP binding. Our results offer additional insights into gating mechanisms and suggest revisions to prevailing models of the kinesin reaction cycle.