Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Targeting the sphingolipid metabolism to defeat pancreatic cancer cell resistance to the chemotherapeutic gemcitabine drug

Defeating pancreatic cancer resistance to the chemotherapeutic drug gemcitabine remains a challenge to treat this deadly cancer. Targeting the sphingolipid metabolism for improving tumor chemosensitivity has recently emerged as a promising strategy. The fine balance between intracellular levels of the prosurvival sphingosine-1-phosphate (S1P) and the proapoptotic ceramide sphingolipids determines cell fate. Among enzymes that control this metabolism, sphingosine kinase-1 (SphK1), a tumor-associated protein overexpressed in many cancers, favors survival through S1P production, and inhibitors of SphK1 are used in ongoing clinical trials to sensitize epithelial ovarian and prostate cancer cells to various chemotherapeutic drugs. We here report that the cellular ceramide/S1P ratio is a critical biosensor for predicting pancreatic cancer cell sensitivity to gemcitabine. A low level of the ceramide/S1P ratio, associated with a high SphK1 activity, correlates with a robust intrinsic pancreatic cancer cell chemoresistance toward gemcitabine. Strikingly, increasing the ceramide/S1P ratio, by using pharmacologic (SphK1 inhibitor or ceramide analogue) or small interfering RNA-based approaches to up-regulate intracellular ceramide levels or reduce SphK1 activity, sensitized pancreatic cancer cells to gemcitabine. Conversely, decreasing the ceramide/S1P ratio, by up-regulating SphK1 activity, promoted gemcitabine resistance in these cells. Development of novel pharmacologic strategies targeting the sphingolipid metabolism might therefore represent an interesting promising approach, when combined with gemcitabine, to defeat pancreatic cancer chemoresistance to this drug. [Mol Cancer Ther 2009;8(4):809–20]
Intelligibility measurements in speech disorders: a critical review of the literature.

BACKGROUND the reduction in speech intelligibility is considered one of the main characteristics of individuals with speech disorders, and is an important issue for clinical and research investigation. In spite of its relevance, the literature does not present a consensus on how to measure speech intelligibility. Besides the diversity of existent methods, another important issue refers to the influence of certain variables on these measurements and, consequently, on the interpretation of the results. AIM to investigate evidence on the agreement between speech intelligibility measurements, obtained through different methods, used in the assessment of speech disorders, and to identify the effect of variables related to assessment procedures or to the listener. A critical review of articles indexed in the databases Medline, Web of Science, Lilacs and Scielo, until October 2007, was carried out. The key-word used to perform the search was speech intelligibility. CONCLUSION there was no evidence of agreement between the speech intelligibility measurements obtained through different methods in the investigated literature. This fact limits the comparison between clinic and research results on speech intelligibility of individuals with speech disorders. Besides that, it was observed that some variables can interfere in these measurements, such as: type of task and speech stimulus, signal presentation mode, type of required answer and listener's experience with the speaker. These must be considered when interpreting the results of speech intelligibility tests.
Luminosity Functions of the Galaxy Cluster MS 1054–0321 at z = 0.83 based on ACS Photometry

We present new measurements of the galaxy luminosity function (LF) and its dependence on local galaxy density, color, morphology, and clustocentric radius for the massive z = 0.83 cluster MS 1054-0321. Our analyses are based on imaging performed with the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) on board the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) in the F606W, F775W, and F850LP passbands and extensive spectroscopic data obtained with the Keck Low-Resolution Imaging Spectrograph. Our main results are based on a spectroscopically selected sample of 143 cluster members with morphological classifications derived from the ACS observations. Our three primary findings are (1) the faint-end slope of the LF is steepest in the bluest filter, (2) the LF in the inner part of the cluster (or highest density regions) has a flatter faint-end slope, and (3) the fraction of early-type galaxies is higher at the bright end of the LF, and gradually decreases toward fainter magnitudes. These characteristics are consistent with those in local galaxy clusters, indicating that, at least in massive clusters, the common characteristics of cluster LFs are established at z = 0.83. These results provide additional support for the hypothesis that the formation of galaxies in MS 1054-0321 began at redshifts considerably greater than unity. We also find a 2 σ deficit of intrinsically faint, red galaxies (i775 - z850 ≥ 0.5, Mi > -19) in this cluster. Although the significance is marginal, this trend may suggest that faint, red galaxies (which are common in z < 0.1 rich clusters) have not yet been created in this cluster at z = 0.83. The giant-to-dwarf ratio in MS 1054-0321 starts to increase inwards of the virial radius or when Σ > 30 Mpc-2, coinciding with the environment where the galaxy star formation rate and the morphology-density relation start to appear. A physical process that begins to become effective at around the virial radius or Σ ~ 30 Mpc-2 may thus be responsible for the evolution of color and luminosity of cluster galaxies.
An Analytical Framework for Multicell Cooperation via Stochastic Geometry and Large Deviations

Multicell cooperation (MCC) is an approach for mitigating intercell interference in dense cellular networks. Existing studies on MCC performance typically rely on either oversimplified Wyner-type models or complex system-level simulations. The promising theoretical results (typically using Wyner models) seem to materialize neither in complex simulations nor in practice. To more accurately investigate the theoretical performance of MCC, this paper models an entire plane of interfering cells as a Poisson random tessellation. The base stations (BSs) are then clustered using a regular lattice, whereby BSs in the same cluster mitigate mutual interference by beamforming with perfect channel state information. Techniques from stochastic geometry and large-deviation theory are applied to analyze the outage probability as a function of the mobile locations, scattering environment, and the average number of cooperating BSs per cluster <i>l</i>. For mobiles near the centers of BS clusters, it is shown that outage probability diminishes as <i>O</i>(<i>e</i><sup>-</sup><i>l</i><sup>ν</sup><sub>1</sub>) with 0 ≤ ν<sub>1</sub> ≤ 1 if scattering is sparse, and as <i>O</i>(<i>l</i><sup>-ν</sup><sub>2</sub>) with ν<sub>2</sub> proportional to the signal diversity order if scattering is rich. For randomly located mobiles, regardless of scattering, outage probability is shown to scale as <i>O</i>(<i>l</i><sup>-ν</sup><sub>3</sub>) with 0 ≤ ν<sub>3</sub> ≤ 0.5. These results confirm analytically that cluster-edge mobiles are the bottleneck for network coverage and provide a plausible analytic framework for more realistic analysis of other multicell techniques.
Parametric Control of Indicators Volatility of the National Economy of Kazakhstan within the Framework of Regional Economic Union

A dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model of Kazakhstan, Belarus and Russia, forming the Customs Union, and the rest of the world has been developed. The estimation of the model parameters has been done on the basis of statistics of Kazakhstan, Belarus, Russia and the rest of the world (in the case of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development). Macroeconomic analysis is conducted for effects of shocks on the economic performance of the national economy of Kazakhstan. The problem of minimizing the volatility of macroeconomic indicators of the national economy of Kazakhstan (GDP and inflation) based on the approach of the theory of parametric control has been formulated and solved. This paper provides DSGE model of the Customs Union and the rest of the world (hereinafter the Model), which differs from the known representations of regional unions that considered regional union is presented in terms of three separate countries, interacting both with each other and with the rest of the world (presented in the form of one country). Relationship between the economies of the countries in the Model is through the flows of goods and capital. The main differences of the Model from well-known
The Old, the Ugly and the Queer : thinking old age in relation to queer theory

This article seeks to use queer theory as a social theory and a critical challenge to normalcy all together to theorise old age in gender studies. Additionally the article discusses some implications of bringing old age into queer theory, where the able body, older person-s sexualities in relation to heteronormativity, to mention a few things, are central for future queer theory. The red thread of the article is how the anti-social turn in queer theory and embracing shame may be used to critique the prevailing discourses of old age as either -successful- where the older person should be active and independent or old age as decline and decay. Queer theoretical notions such as failure and the abject are used to theorise old age and ageing bodies, but the article also discusses how some flexible bodies can overcome failures given class, sexuality, ablebodiedness and race etc. To perform in the Butlerian sense an intelligible and desired self is dependent both on gender, sexuality and age and this is in effect relying on certain modes of temporality. Queer temporality may thus challenge what is considered normal and good ageing but also reveal the taken for grantedness of normative time. The article concludes that by thinking queer theory and old age together a resurrection of knowledges is made possible, outside the good, successful and respectable old age.
Diverse aspects of dating: associations with psychosocial functioning from early to middle adolescence.

Theories imply that some aspects of adolescent dating behavior will be associated with individuals' positive psychosocial functioning, while other aspects will be associated with problems. This study addressed associations between diverse aspects of dating at age 16 and: (1) individual and social functioning at age 12 and at age 16; and (2) change in psychosocial functioning from age 12 to age 16. Controlling for physical maturity, overinvolvement in dating at age 16 was associated with poorer psychosocial functioning in early and middle adolescence and also predicted declines in functioning between the two ages. Level of dating experience and quality of romantic relationships were associated with social adaptation at age 16, especially in the friendship and dating domains.
Prenatal Exposures and Glucose Metabolism in Adulthood

OBJECTIVE—Birth weight has been associated with the risk of type 2 diabetes in several studies. We investigated whether prenatal influences on birth weight (gestational age, parity, preeclampsia, prepregnancy BMI, smoking during pregnancy, and socioeconomic position [SEP]) were associated with glucose metabolism in midlife and the role of birth weight for gestational age (BGA) and adult adiposity in mediating these associations. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS—Data from 7,518 participants of the 1958 British Birth Cohort with information on A1C at age 45 years were analyzed. Associations between prenatal exposures and A1C ≥6% were examined using a series of logistic regression models. The basic model consisted of all prenatal factors (except parity) adjusted for sex and family history of type 2 diabetes. Further adjustments included BGA only, concurrent adiposity only (BMI and waist circumference), and BGA plus adiposity. RESULTS—In the basic model, preeclampsia (odds ratio 1.78 [95% CI 1.14–2.80]), prepregnancy BMI ≥25 kg/m2 (1.90 [1.45–2.47]), maternal smoking (1.33 [1.04–1.71]), and manual SEP (1.87 [1.36–2.58]) were independently associated with A1C at 45 years of age. Adjustment for BGA had little impact on the prenatal factors/A1C associations, whereas adjustment for adult adiposity at 45 years substantially reduced associations for prepregnancy BMI, smoking during pregnancy, and SEP. CONCLUSIONS—Prenatal exposures were related to blood glucose levels in mid-adulthood. Associations for several prenatal factors were largely mediated through adult adiposity but surprisingly not through birth weight. Prenatal exposures are likely to have the strongest effect on glucose metabolism indirectly through their influence on adiposity.
Subclinical Depressive Symptoms and Continued Cannabis Use: Predictors of Negative Outcomes in First Episode Psychosis

Background Although depressive symptoms in first episode psychosis have been associated with cannabis abuse, their influence on the long-term functional course of FEP patients who abuse cannabis is unknown. The aims of the study were to examine the influence of subclinical depressive symptoms on the long-term outcome in first episode-psychosis patients who were cannabis users and to assess the influence of these subclinical depressive symptoms on the ability to quit cannabis use. Methods 64 FEP patients who were cannabis users at baseline were followed-up for 5 years. Two groups were defined: (a) patients with subclinical depressive symptoms at least once during follow-up (DPG), and (b) patients without subclinical depressive symptoms during follow-up (NDPG). Psychotic symptoms were measured using the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS), depressive symptoms using the Hamilton Depression Rating Scale (HDRS)-17, and psychosocial functioning was assessed using the Global Assessment of Functioning (GAF). A linear mixed-effects model was used to analyze the combined influence of cannabis use and subclinical depressive symptomatology on the clinical outcome. Results Subclinical depressive symptoms were associated with continued abuse of cannabis during follow-up (β= 4.45; 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.78 to 11.17; P = .001) and with worse functioning (β = -5.50; 95% CI: -9.02 to -0.33; P = .009). Conclusions Subclinical depressive symptoms and continued cannabis abuse during follow-up could be predictors of negative outcomes in FEP patients.
Borel and Hausdorff hierarchies in topological spaces of Choquet games and their effectivization

What parts of the classical descriptive set theory done in Polish spaces still hold for more general topological spaces, possibly T 0 or T 1, but not T 2 (i.e. not Hausdorff)? This question has been addressed by Selivanov in a series of papers centred on algebraic domains. And recently it has been considered by de Brecht for quasi-Polish spaces, a framework that contains both countably based continuous domains and Polish spaces. In this paper, we present alternative unifying topological spaces, that we call approximation spaces. They are exactly the spaces for which player Nonempty has a stationary strategy in the Choquet game. A natural proper subclass of approximation spaces coincides with the class of quasi-Polish spaces. We study the Borel and Hausdorff difference hierarchies in approximation spaces, revisiting the work done for the other topological spaces. We also consider the problem of effectivization of these results.
Under the Same Blue Sky? Inequity in Migrant Children's Education in China.

It is estimated that more than 10% of China’s population has left their villages and hometowns as millions of farmers have descended upon cities and urban centers in response to a huge demand for labor since the economic reform launched in the late 1970s (Li, 2006). Approximately 19.8 million children are believed to have accompanied their parents in this mass internal migration, with the result that many lack adequate access to health care, education, and other basic services (Chan, 2009). This article discusses migrant children’s schooling experiences in China in the context of massive migration from rural areas to the cities and trends toward reverse migration induced by the recent global economic crisis. It further explores the responses from the migrant communities to their children’s educational needs in the face of financial cutbacks and economic insecurity.
Part of Speech Tagging and Chunking with Conditional Random Fields

The paper presents a CRF (Conditional Random Fields) based part of speech tagger and chunker for hindi. Various experiments were carried out with various sets and combinations of features which mark a gradual increase in the performance of the system throughout building process. Apart from CRF based learning using the CRF package " CRF++, Yet Another CRF Package " , a morph analyzer is used to provide extra information like root word and possible PoS tags for training. With training on 21000 words with the best feature set, the CRF based POS tagger is 82.67% accurate, while the chunker performs at 90.89% when evaluated with evaluation script from conll 2000.The reason for not so good performance of the CRF based learning is the small size of the training data. CRF training, being a discriminative approach to classifying needs a larger training data. It although performs good with chunking because the number of classes is much smaller than the one in POS tagging. INTRODUCTION art-of-speech (POS) tagging is the task of assigning grammatical classes to words in a natural language sentence. It's important because subsequent processing stages (such as parsing) become easier if the word class for a word is available. Similarly chunking consists of dividing a text in syntactically correlated parts of words. For example, the sentence He reckons the current account deficit will narrow to only # 1.8 billion in September. can be divided as follows:
Evolution of novel mimicry rings facilitated by adaptive introgression in tropical butterflies

Understanding the genetic basis of phenotypic variation and the mechanisms involved in the evolution of adaptive novelty, especially in adaptive radiations, is a major goal in evolutionary biology. Here, we used whole‐genome sequence data to investigate the origin of the yellow hindwing bar in the Heliconius cydno radiation. We found modular variation associated with hindwing phenotype in two narrow noncoding regions upstream and downstream of the cortex gene, which was recently identified as a pigmentation pattern controller in multiple species of Heliconius. Genetic variation at each of these modules suggests an independent control of the dorsal and ventral hindwing patterning, with the upstream module associated with the ventral phenotype and the downstream module with the dorsal one. Furthermore, we detected introgression between H. cydno and its closely related species Heliconius melpomene in these modules, likely allowing both species to participate in novel mimicry rings. In sum, our findings support the role of regulatory modularity coupled with adaptive introgression as an elegant mechanism by which novel phenotypic combinations can evolve and fuel an adaptive radiation.
Application of social control theory on Bagcilar High School students : Hirschi's model

The delinquency and drug problems have wide range of damaging consequences not only for the individuals involved in delinquency and illegal drug use, but also for their families and the overall community. In order to overcome such problems, understanding the causation or restraining factors in determining both delinquency and illegal substance use oriented behaviors is essential. Unfortunately, there are limited studies to understand the reasons and restraining factors of delinquency and illegal substance use within criminological theories in Turkey. However, there are outnumber studies carried out to test the validity of various criminological theories in explaining delinquency and illegal substance use in other Western country cases. Among such theories, ‘social control theory’, as one of the most accepted and strongest criminological theories, has been tested in those countries. However, limited numbers of studies have been conducted on ‘social control theory’ in the countries where traditional values are still dominant, such as Turkey. Therefore, this study aims to fill this gap in the case of Turkey. The aim of this study, hence, is to measure the nexus between social control elements and both delinquency and illegal substance use among Bagcilar High School students within the theoretical framework of ‘social control theory’. Bagcilar is the biggest borough of Istanbul, which has received migration from different parts of Turkey in the last thirty years with different cultural backgrounds. Therefore, it is one of the cosmopolitan parts of the Istanbul city with its population diversity. In fulfilling the aim of the study, secondary data has been used in testing the social control theory for which the variables have been derived from various studies based on literature review. Extensive statistical analyses were applied to the data set to measure the relationships between social control variables and delinquency and illegal substance use related behaviour, which included correlation and regression analyses. The findings show that some of the social control variables verified the social control theory in Bagcilar’s case, while others did not. As a result, social control theory with its identified variables explains 31.9 percent of delinquency and 34.5 percent of illegal substance use in overall. It is important to note that some of the variables considered to be im portant in the Turkish case such as religion could not be found as a significant variable. On the other hand, it has been observed that family structure is statistically significant on younger ages while it is not statistically significant for elders. Based on finding, policy recommendations have been made for both law enforcement agencies and other governmental institutions, because it has been widely accepted that fighting with delinquency and illegal substance use cannot be limited to law enforcement agencies, as the involvement of other social policy oriented organizations are indispensable.
Gravitational Radiation from Post-Newtonian Sources and Inspiralling Compact Binaries

The article reviews the current status of a theoretical approach to the problem of the emission of gravitational waves by isolated systems in the context of general relativity. Part A of the article deals with general post-Newtonian sources. The exterior field of the source is investigated by means of a combination of analytic post-Minkowskian and multipolar approximations. The physical observables in the far-zone of the source are described by a specific set of radiative multipole moments. By matching the exterior solution to the metric of the post-Newtonian source in the near-zone we obtain the explicit expressions of the source multipole moments. The relationships between the radiative and source moments involve many nonlinear multipole interactions, among them those associated with the tails (and tails-of-tails of gravitational waves. Part B of the article is devoted to the application to compact binary systems. We present the equations of binary motion, and the associated Lagrangian and Hamiltonian, at the third post-Newtonian (3PN) order beyond the Newtonian acceleration. The gravitational-wave energy flux, taking consistently into account the relativistic corrections in the binary moments as well as the various tail effects, is derived through 3.5PN order with respect to the quadrupole formalism. The binary’s orbital phase, whose prior knowledge is crucial for searching and analyzing the signals from inspiralling compact binaries, is deduced from an energy balance argument.