Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Characterization of Epstein-Barr Virus miRNAome in Nasopharyngeal Carcinoma by Deep Sequencing

Virus-encoded microRNAs (miRNAs) have been shown to regulate a variety of biological processes involved in viral infection and viral-associated pathogenesis. Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) is a herpesvirus implicated in nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) and other human malignancies. EBV-encoded miRNAs were among the first group of viral miRNAs identified. To understand the roles of EBV miRNAs in the pathogenesis of NPC, we utilized deep sequencing technology to characterize the EBV miRNA transcriptome in clinical NPC tissues. We obtained more than 110,000 sequence reads in NPC samples and identified 44 EBV BART miRNAs, including four new mature miRNAs derived from previously identified BART miRNA precursor hairpins. Further analysis revealed extensive sequence variations (isomiRs) of EBV miRNAs, including terminal isomiRs at both the 5′ and 3′ ends and nucleotide variants. Analysis of EBV genomic sequences indicated that the majority of EBV miRNA nucleotide variants resulted from post-transcriptional modifications. Read counts of individual EBV miRNA in NPC tissue spanned from a few reads to approximately 18,000 reads, confirming the wide expression range of EBV miRNAs. Several EBV miRNAs were expressed at levels similar to highly abundant human miRNAs. Sequence analysis revealed that most of the highly abundant EBV miRNAs share their seed sequences (nucleotides 2–7) with human miRNAs, suggesting that seed sequence content may be an important factor underlying the differential accumulation of BART miRNAs. Interestingly, many of these human miRNAs have been found to be dysregulated in human malignancies, including NPC. These observations not only provide a potential linkage between EBV miRNAs and human malignancy but also suggest a highly coordinated mechanism through which EBV miRNAs may mimic or compete with human miRNAs to affect cellular functions.
The Compression Flow as a Measure to Estimate the Brain Connectivity Changes in Resting State fMRI and 18FDG-PET Alzheimer's Disease Connectomes

The human brain appears organized in compartments characterized by seemingly specific functional purposes on many spatial scales. A complementary functional state binds information from specialized districts to return what is called integrated information. These fundamental network dynamics undergoes to severe disarrays in diverse degenerative conditions such as Alzheimer's Diseases (AD). The AD represents a multifarious syndrome characterized by structural, functional, and metabolic landmarks. In particular, in the early stages of AD, adaptive functional modifications of the brain networks mislead initial diagnoses because cognitive abilities may result indiscernible from normal subjects. As a matter of facts, current measures of functional integration fail to catch significant differences among normal, mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and even AD subjects. The aim of this work is to introduce a new topological feature called Compression Flow (CF) to finely estimate the extent of the functional integration in the brain networks. The method uses a Monte Carlo-like estimation of the information integration flows returning the compression ratio between the size of the injected information and the size of the condensed information within the network. We analyzed the resting state connectomes of 75 subjects of the Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative 2 (ADNI) repository. Our analyses are focused on the 18FGD-PET and functional MRI (fMRI) acquisitions in several clinical screening conditions. Results indicated that CF effectively discriminate MCI, AD and normal subjects by showing a significant decrease of the functional integration in the AD and MCI brain connectomes. This result did not emerge by using a set of common complex network statistics. Furthermore, CF was best correlated with individual clinical scoring scales. In conclusion, we presented a novel measure to quantify the functional integration that resulted efficient to discriminate different stages of dementia and to track the individual progression of the impairments prospecting a proficient usage in a wide range of pathophysiological and physiological studies as well.
Synapses are regulated by the cytoplasmic tyrosine kinase Fer in a pathway mediated by p120catenin, Fer, SHP-2, and β-catenin

Localization of presynaptic components to synaptic sites is critical for hippocampal synapse formation. Cell adhesion–regulated signaling is important for synaptic development and function, but little is known about differentiation of the presynaptic compartment. In this study, we describe a pathway that promotes presynaptic development involving p120catenin (p120ctn), the cytoplasmic tyrosine kinase Fer, the protein phosphatase SHP-2, and β-catenin. Presynaptic Fer depletion prevents localization of active zone constituents and synaptic vesicles and inhibits excitatory synapse formation and synaptic transmission. Depletion of p120ctn or SHP-2 similarly disrupts synaptic vesicle localization with active SHP-2, restoring synapse formation in the absence of Fer. Fer or SHP-2 depletion results in elevated tyrosine phosphorylation of β-catenin. β-Catenin overexpression restores normal synaptic vesicle localization in the absence of Fer or SHP-2. Our results indicate that a presynaptic signaling pathway through p120ctn, Fer, SHP-2, and β-catenin promotes excitatory synapse development and function.
CXCR4 Regulates Interneuron Migration in the Developing Neocortex

The chemotactic factors directing interneuron migration during cerebrocortical development are essentially unknown. Here we identify the CXC chemokine receptor 4 (CXCR4) in interneuron precursors migrating from the basal forebrain to the neocortex and demonstrate that stromal cell-derived factor-1 (SDF-1) is a potent chemoattractant for isolated striatal precursors. In addition, we show that CXCR4 is present in early generated Cajal-Retzius cells of the cortical marginal zone. In mice with a null mutation in CXCR4 or SDF-1, interneurons were severely underrepresented in the superficial layers and ectopically placed in the deep layers of the neocortex. In contrast, the submeningeal positioning of Cajal-Retzius cells was unaffected. Thus, our findings suggest that SDF-1, which is highly expressed in the embryonic leptomeninx, selectively regulates migration and layer-specific integration of CXCR4-expressing interneurons during neocortical development.
Classification of Offline Handwritten Signatures using Wavelets and a Pattern Recognition Neural Network

The various studies conducted for classification of handwritten signatures of people have shown that the task is difficult because there is intra personal differences among the signatures of the same person. The signatures of the same person vary with time, age of the person and also because of the emotional state of a person. The task of classifying the skilled forgery signatures is all the more challenging because they are the result of lot of practice, closely imitating the signature. Neural networks based classifiers have proved to yield very accurate results. This paper for offline signature verification uses the images stored in the GPDS database. The preprocessed images are decomposed using discrete wavelet t ransform up to the maximum level. The wavelet energy features corresponding to the approximation and detail along with the approximation and detail coefficients make the feature set. A pattern recognition neural network is designed which classifies the inputs based on the target classes.
Novel numerical and experimental analysis of dynamic responses under board level drop test

Board level solder joint reliability during drop test is a great concern to semiconductor and electronic product manufacturers. A new JEDEC standard for board level drop test of handheld electronic products was just released to specify the drop test procedure and conditions. In this paper, comprehensive dynamic responses of PCB and solder joints, e.g., acceleration, strains, and resistance, are measured and analyzed in detail with a multi-channel real-time electrical monitoring system. It is found experimentally and numerically that the mechanical shock causes multiple PCB bending or vibration which induces the solder joint fatigue failure. A novel input acceleration (input-G) method is developed to simulate the exact drop test process using ANSYS-LSDYNA software. The model can be applied to simulate the overall impact responses including PCB cyclic bending, which are very critical for understanding of board level drop test.
Effects of Aerobics Intervention on Health-related Physical Fitness and Exercise Behavior of the middle-aged and elderly people

This study aims to discuss the effects of a 12-week Aerobics and Exercise Perception course on Health-related Physical Fitness and Exercise Behavior of the middle-aged and elderly people. With purposively sampling, total 38 middle-aged and elderly participants above the age 55 in a community are selected as the research samples for the tests of physical fitness (BMI, 3-min step test, 1-min sit-up, and sit-and-reach) and questionnaire survey of Exercise Behavior before and after the intervention. Descriptive Statistics, Paired-Samples t Test, Independent-Sample t Test, and Chi-Square Distribution Test are utilized for analyses. The research outcomes show that (1) the blood pressure of male and female middle-aged and elderly participants achieves the significant difference (p < .05), (2) the cardiopulmonary, muscular, and flexibility fitness, but not BMI, in Health-related Physical Fitness reaches the significant difference (p < .05), and (3) the effects on Exercise Behavior do not achieve the significant difference (p < .05), but the exercise frequency, period, and item increase apparently; the variables of Exercise could assist in getting well with others, Exercise is funny, and Exercise could release pressure in Exercise Attitude reach the significant difference (p < .05) before and after the intervention; and, Exercise Perception merely achieves the significant difference (p < .05) on Perception of Aerobics. It is concluded that Aerobics and Exercise Perception course could improve Exercise Attitude of the middle-aged and elderly participants and enhance the cardiopulmonary, muscular, and flexibility fitness. For the improvement of body composition, intervention in exercise and diet control suitable for individuals should be planned so as to reduce weight and enhance health.
Multilingual Multi-modal Embeddings for Natural Language Processing

We propose a novel discriminative model that learns embeddings from multilingual and multi-modal data, meaning that our model can take advantage of images and descriptions in multiple languages to improve embedding quality. To that end, we introduce a modification of a pairwise contrastive estimation optimisation function as our training objective. We evaluate our embeddings on an image-sentence ranking (ISR), a semantic textual similarity (STS), and a neural machine translation (NMT) task. We find that the additional multilingual signals lead to improvements on both the ISR and STS tasks, and the discriminative cost can also be used in re-ranking $n$-best lists produced by NMT models, yielding strong improvements.
Surface operators in the Klebanov-Witten theory

We investigate 1/2 BPS conformal surface operators in the Klebanov-Witten theory. These surface operators preserve certain parts of the conformal symmetry and R-symmetry as well as half of the supersymmetry. We propose the gravity dual of the surface operator as a configuration of a D3-brane in AdS5 ? T1,1. This D3-brane preserves the same amount of the supersymmetry as the surface operator. We also compute the correlation function of the surface operator and a chiral primary operator.
Detecting Malware Variants by Byte Frequency

In order to make lots of new malwares fast and cheaply, attacker can simply modify the existing malwares based on their binary files to produce new ones, malware variants. Malware variants refer to all the new malwares manually or automatically produced from any existing malware. However, such simple approach to produce malwares can change signatures of the original malware so that the new malware variants can confuse and bypass most of popular signature-based anti-malware tools. In this paper we propose a novel byte frequency based detecting model (BFBDM) to deal with the malware variants identification issue. The byte frequency of software refers to the frequency of the different unsigned bytes in the corresponding binary file. In order to implement BFBDM, two metrics, the distance and the similarity between the suspicious software and base sample, a known malware, are defined and calculated. According to the experimental results, we found out that if the distance is low and the similarity is high, the suspicious software is a variant of the selected malware with very high probability. The primary experimental results show that our model is efficient and effective for the identification of malware variants, especially for the manual variant.
Genetic recombination of bacterial plasmid DNA: effect of RecF pathway mutations on plasmid recombination in Escherichia coli

Tn5 insertion mutations in the recN gene, and in what appears to be a new RecF pathway gene designated recO and mapping at approximately 55.4 min on the standard genetic map, were isolated by screening Tn5 insertion mutations that cotransduced with tyrA. The recO1504::Tn5 mutation decreased the frequency of recombination during Hfr-mediated crosses and increased the susceptibility to killing by UV irradiation and mitomycin C when present in a recB recC sbcB background, but only increased the sensitivity to killing by UV irradiation when present in an otherwise Rec+ background. The effects of these and other RecF pathway mutations on plasmid recombination were tested. Mutations in the recJ, recO, and ssb genes, when present in otherwise Rec+ E. coli strains, decreased the frequency of plasmid recombination, whereas the lexA3, recAo281, recN, and ruv mutations had no effect on plasmid recombination. Tn5 insertion mutations in the lexA gene increased the frequency of plasmid recombination. These data indicate that plasmid recombination events in wild-type Escherichia coli strains are catalyzed by a recombination pathway that is related to the RecF recombination pathway and that some component of this pathway besides the recA gene product is regulated by the lexA gene product.
Susceptibility to keel bone fractures in laying hens and the role of genetic variation

&NA; Keel bone fractures are a well‐known welfare problem in modern commercial laying hen systems. The present study sought to identify genetic variation in relation to keel bone fracture susceptibility of 4 distinct crossbred and one pure line, and by extension, possible breeding traits. Susceptibility to fractures were assessed using an ex vivo impact testing protocol in combination with a study design that minimized environmental variation to focus on genetic differences. The 5 crossbred/pure lines differed in their susceptibility to keel bone fractures with the greatest likelihood of fracture in one of the 3 commercial lines and the lowest susceptibility to fractures in one of the experimental lines. Egg production at the hen‐level did not differ between the crossbred/pure lines (P > 0.05), though an increased susceptibility to keel bone fractures was associated with thinner eggshells and reduced egg breaking strength, a pattern consistent among all tested crossbred/pure lines. Our findings suggest an association between egg quality and bone strength which appeared to be independent of crossbred/pure line. The findings indicate the benefit of the impact methodology to identify potential breeding characteristics to reduce incidence of keel fracture as well as the potential relationship with eggshell quality.
Contacts and encounters in English as a Lingua Franca

This wide-ranging book, focused on the use of English as a lingua franca in intranational and international contexts, explores the ecologies in which interactions in English occur and the phonological, grammatical, lexical and pragmatic processes that take place when speakers of different varieties of L2 English come into contact. For Meierkord, a key difference between intranational and international contexts is that in the former interactions tend to take place in relatively stable communities, circumstances which are more propitious for the adoption of new features and the eventual emergence of new L2 varieties; for example, the nativised varieties of post–colonial societies. In international contexts, by contrast, lingua franca encounters tend to be more short-term, and there is therefore less opportunity for the emergence, adoption and stabilisation of new features. Accommodation, rather, is one of the more common pragmatic responses. These, however, are rough generalisations, for throughout the book an important motif is heterogeneity: heterogeneity in the varieties of English entering into contact, heterogeneity in speaker characteristics such as their level of English proficiency, and heterogeneity in the purposes and contexts of the encounters.
ON MULTIGRAPH EXTREMAL PROBLEMS

1 . Introduction . In this paper we shall consider multigraphs and digraphs (= directed graphs) with bounded multiplicity : an integer r is fixed and we shall assume, that the considered multigraphs or digraphs have no loops, further, if u and v are two vertices of a multigraph M, they can be joined by more than one edge, however, they cannot be joined by more than r edges. In case of digraphs u and v cannot be joined by more than r edges of the same orientation .
Long-term memory prepares neural activity for perception

Past experience provides a rich source of predictive information about the world that could be used to guide and optimize ongoing perception. However, the neural mechanisms that integrate information coded in long-term memory (LTM) with ongoing perceptual processing remain unknown. Here, we explore how the contents of LTM optimize perception by modulating anticipatory brain states. By using a paradigm that integrates LTM and attentional orienting, we first demonstrate that the contents of LTM sharpen perceptual sensitivity for targets presented at memory-predicted spatial locations. Next, we examine oscillations in EEG to show that memory-guided attention is associated with spatially specific desynchronization of alpha-band activity over visual cortex. Additionally, we use functional MRI to confirm that target-predictive spatial information stored in LTM triggers spatiotopic modulation of preparatory activity in extrastriate visual cortex. Finally, functional MRI results also implicate an integrated cortical network, including the hippocampus and a dorsal frontoparietal circuit, as a likely candidate for organizing preparatory states in visual cortex according to the contents of LTM.
Clinical implications of sex in acute temporomandibular disorders.

BACKGROUND Previous research on temporomandibular disorders, or TMDs, has been somewhat limited, with studies having low numbers of subjects, restricting the focus to women or looking at patients already diagnosed with chronic TMD. Because early intervention is beneficial, it is important to understand the symptoms that men and women have in the acute stage of TMD. METHODS A total of 233 patients (161 women, 72 men) with acute TMD symptoms were assessed with a battery of biopsychosocial measures. Patients were diagnosed as having TMD on the basis of research diagnostic criteria, or RDC, or RDC, for TMD. After six months, patients were reassessed to determine whether they continued to have pain, thus classifying them as having chronic TMD. The authors found that 153 patients (47 men, 106 women) had developed a chronic condition, while 80 patients (25 men, 55 women) no longer reported pain (nonchronic). RESULTS Female and male patients who developed chronic TMD differed significantly from patients who had acute symptoms that subsided. Women who developed chronic TMD exhibited significantly more psychosocial distress and impairment than women who did not develop chronic TMD, in terms of Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, Fourth Edition, or DSM-IV, diagnoses; Beck Depression Inventory, or BDI, scores; Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory scores; Multidimensional Pain Inventory, or MPI, scores; and physical and psychological measures assessed with the RDC for TMD. Men who developed chronic TMD differed significantly from men who did not develop chronic TMD, in that they exhibited more impairment in terms of DSM-IV diagnoses and BDI and RDC measures. CONCLUSIONS These findings provide evidence that significant differences exist between men and women in regard to acute TMD symptoms. CLINICAL IMPLICATIONS The biopsychosocial differences between men and women suggest that some treatments may be more beneficial for women than for men.
Remission of Ulcerated Necrobiosis Lipoidica Diabeticorum after Bariatric Surgery

A 32-year-old woman with type 2 diabetes mellitus suffering from morbid obesity with BMI 45,14 kg/m2 was operated on. Not only the type 2DM but also one of its complication known as necrobiosis lipoidica diabeticorum remitted postoperatively. Obesity should no longer be regarded simply as a cosmetic problem affecting certain individuals but an epidemic that threatens global well-being. It causes or exacerbates many health problems, and in particular, it is associated with the type 2 diabetes. Necrobiosis lipoidica is a granulomatous skin disease of unknown etiology, associated mainly with diabetes mellitus. We presented in this paper a morbid obese case of necrobiosis lipoidica diabeticorum with dramatic good response to bariatric surgery.
Cheeger-Type Approximation for Sparsest st-Cut

We introduce the st-cut version of the sparsest-cut problem, where the goal is to find a cut of minimum sparsity in a graph G(V, E) among those separating two distinguished vertices s, t ∈ V. Clearly, this problem is at least as hard as the usual (non-st) version. Our main result is a polynomial-time algorithm for the product-demands setting that produces a cut of sparsity O(√OPT), where OPT ⩽ 1 denotes the optimum when the total edge capacity and the total demand are assumed (by normalization) to be 1. Our result generalizes the recent work of Trevisan [arXiv, 2013] for the non-st version of the same problem (sparsest cut with product demands), which in turn generalizes the bound achieved by the discrete Cheeger inequality, a cornerstone of Spectral Graph Theory that has numerous applications. Indeed, Cheeger’s inequality handles graph conductance, the special case of product demands that are proportional to the vertex (capacitated) degrees. Along the way, we obtain an O(log |V|) approximation for the general-demands setting of sparsest st-cut.
Cultural dimensions of youth suicide

This paper is about the social context of suicide, especially its cultural dimensions. Studying this context means understanding complex systems, which comprise many entities that interact in often multiple, weak, diffuse and non-linear ways. Specifically, it also means coming to terms with the rich intricacy and subtlety of the interplay between social conditions, individual circumstances and personal states of mind.