Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Global and Local Competition between Exogenously Introduced microRNAs and Endogenously Expressed microRNAs

It has been reported that exogenously introduced micro-RNA (exo-miRNA) competes with endogenously expressed miRNAs (endo-miRNAs) in human cells, resulting in a detectable upregulation of mRNAs with endo-miRNA target sites (TSs). However, the detailed mechanisms of the competition between exo- and endo-miRNAs remain uninvestigated. In this study, using 74 microarrays that monitored the whole-transcriptome response after introducing miRNAs or siRNAs into HeLa cells, we systematically examined the derepression of mRNAs with exo- and/or endo-miRNA TSs. We quantitatively assessed the effect of the number of endo-miRNA TSs on the degree of mRNA derepression. As a result, we observed that the number of endo-miRNA TSs was significantly associated with the degree of derepression, supporting that the derepression resulted from the competition between exo- and endo-miRNAs. However, when we examined whether the site proficiency of exo-miRNA TSs could also influence mRNA derepression, to our surprise, we discovered a strong positive correlation. Our analysis indicates that site proficiencies of both exo- and endo-miRNA TSs are important determinants for the degree of mRNA derepression, implying that the derepression of mRNAs in response to exo-miRNA is more complex than that currently perceived. Our observations may lead to a more complete understanding of the detailed mechanisms of the competition between exo- and endo-miRNAs and to a more accurate prediction of miRNA targets. Our analysis also suggests an interesting hypothesis that long 3′-UTRs may function as molecular buffer against gene expression regulation by individual miRNAs.
A Framework for Lateral Membrane Trafficking and Polar Tethering of the PEN3 ATP-Binding Cassette Transporter1[CC-BY]

ACTIN7 is required for trans-Golgi network trafficking of outer lateral membrane cargo and for polarity of its EXOCYST84b tethering factor. The outermost cell layer of plants, the epidermis, and its outer (lateral) membrane domain facing the environment are continuously challenged by biotic and abiotic stresses. Therefore, the epidermis and the outer membrane domain provide important selective and protective barriers. However, only a small number of specifically outer membrane-localized proteins are known. Similarly, molecular mechanisms underlying the trafficking and the polar placement of outer membrane domain proteins require further exploration. Here, we demonstrate that ACTIN7 (ACT7) mediates trafficking of the PENETRATION3 (PEN3) outer membrane protein from the trans-Golgi network (TGN) to the plasma membrane in the root epidermis of Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) and that actin function contributes to PEN3 endocytic recycling. In contrast to such generic ACT7-dependent trafficking from the TGN, the EXOCYST84b (EXO84b) tethering factor mediates PEN3 outer-membrane polarity. Moreover, precise EXO84b placement at the outer membrane domain itself requires ACT7 function. Hence, our results uncover spatially and mechanistically distinct requirements for ACT7 function during outer lateral membrane cargo trafficking and polarity establishment. They further identify an exocyst tethering complex mediator of outer lateral membrane cargo polarity.
[Correlation of ultrasound biomicroscopy with histological findings in diagnosis of giant cell arteritis].

BACKGROUND A biopsy of the temporal arteries is still the appropriate method to prove the diagnosis of giant cell arteritis. We evaluated the potential use of high-resolution ultrasound-biomicroscopy in the diagnosis of giant cell arteritis. PATIENTS AND METHODS In a prospective study we examined 16 patients (8 women and 8 men) with a mean age of 71 years with the clinical suspicion of a giant cell arteritis. Additionally to the clinical examination the temporal arteries were imaged in all patients using the ultrasound-biomicroscopy (Zeiss-Humphrey Instruments). The results were correlated to the histopathologic changes of the temporal arteries excised bilaterally at the same location. RESULTS Histopathological evaluation revealed a granulomatous arteritis in 4 out of 16 examined patients. The temporal arteries of these patients also showed characteristic changes using ultrasound biomicroscopy like middle-reflective shadowing of the arterial lumen and a condensation and enlargement of the muscularis media. Ultrasound-biomicroscopy allowed a precise evaluation of the temporal arteries due to a high-resolution sonographic image. The morphological differentiation between a normal and an affected artery was possible. A positive correlation between histopathological and clinical findings was seen in all patients. CONCLUSION In this preliminary study the ultrasound-biomicroscopy seemed to be an appropriate non-invasive tool for the morphological imaging and evaluation of temporal arteries.
Use of Cryopreserved Femoral Vein for In Situ Replacement of Infected Femorofemoral Prosthetic Artery Bypass

Isolated groin infection following crossover femoral bypass is not uncommon, and its management may be challenging, especially in medically high-risk patients. When an in situ replacement is appropriate, using an autologous vein (femoral or saphenous) would be the preferred method; however, this may not always be feasible. The authors used cryopreserved femoral vein grafts for in situ replacement of femorofemoral bypass grafts with excellent results in 3 high-risk patients who developed early graft infections and failed graft preservation attempts. In situ replacement of infected femorofemoral grafts using a cryopreserved femoral vein graft can be considered as a second-line intervention when an adequately sized autologous vein is unavailable or unusable or is not feasible in high-risk patients.
Differential Privacy Under Fire

Anonymizing private data before release is not enough to reliably protect privacy, as Netflix and AOL have learned to their cost. Recent research on differential privacy opens a way to obtain robust, provable privacy guarantees, and systems like PINQ and Airavat now offer convenient frameworks for processing arbitrary userspecified queries in a differentially private way. However, these systems are vulnerable to a variety of covertchannel attacks that can be exploited by an adversarial querier. We describe several different kinds of attacks, all feasible in PINQ and some in Airavat. We discuss the space of possible countermeasures, and we present a detailed design for one specific solution, based on a new primitive we call predictable transactions and a simple differentially private programming language. Our evaluation, which relies on a proof-of-concept implementation based on the Caml Light runtime, shows that our design is effective against remotely exploitable covert channels, at the expense of a higher query completion time.
Learning to Focus Reasoning in a Reactive Agent

In this paper we present an online learning algorithm that lets an agent architecture acquire an attentional strategy that is adapted to the environment. This allows the agent to focus its reasoning on the most re-warding parts of its knowledge base and hence achieve a higher performance under time and computational resource constraints. We use the I CARUS agent architecture as an underlying framework and we present experimental results.
Radiation‐induced sarcoma in patients with nasopharyngeal carcinoma

The increasing incidence of radiation‐induced sarcoma (RIS) has become a significant problem that can limit long‐term survival. The objective of the current study was to analyze the clinicopathologic characteristics, treatment outcomes, and prognostic factors of RIS after radiotherapy for nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC).
Qualizon graphs: space-efficient time-series visualization with qualitative abstractions

In several application fields, the joint visualization of quantitative data and qualitative abstractions can help analysts make sense of complex time series data by associating precise numeric values with corresponding domain-specific interpretations, such as good, bad, high, low, normal. At the same time, the need to analyse large multivariate time-oriented datasets often calls for keeping visualizations as compact as possible. In this paper, we introduce Qualizon Graphs, a compact visualization that combines quantitative data and qualitative abstractions. It is based on the well known Horizon Graphs, but instead of a predefined number of equally sized bands, it uses as many bands as qualitative categories with corresponding different sizes. In this way, Qualizon Graphs increase the data density of visualized quantitative values and inherently integrate qualitative abstractions. A user study shows that Qualizon Graphs are as fast and accurate as Horizon Graphs for quantitative data, and are an alternative to state-of-the-art visualizations for both quantitative and qualitative data, enabling a trade-off between speed and accuracy.
The Value of Adoption

ABSTRACT Recent work shows that the governmental cost of adoption is about half the cost of long-term foster care for children whose birth parents' rights have been terminated. Because adoption is also associated with greater accumulation of human and social capital, the total savings to government in areas such as special education and criminal justice is of the same magnitude as the child welfare savings. The private benefit to adopted children in terms of additional income earned over their working lives is similarly large. In all, a dollar spent on the adoption of a child from foster care yields about three dollars in benefits.
Experimental Study on Scour Depth in Around a T-shape Spur Dike in a 180 Degree Bend

In this study results of experimental study on scour depth around a T-shape spur dike in a 180 degree channel bend are presented. Experiments were conducted in a laboratory channel to measure the variations of bed topography under a clear water condition. Experiments were conducted for different locations, lengths and wings of T-shape spur dikes at the bend with various Froude number. In this study, the time development of the local scour around the T-shape spur dike plates was studied. It was found that by increasing the Froude number and length and wing length of T-shape spur dike the amount of scour depth increases and increases depth of scour occurs at location of 60 drgree. Measuring depth of scouring based on experimental observation, an empirical relation is developed with high regression coefficient 97%. (Journal of American Science 2010;6(10):886-892). (ISSN: 1545-1003).
The Relationship between Learning Conception, Study Strategy and Learning Outcome.

Summary. The essential point of the present study is that human learning should be studied from a second-order perspective. This means that the emphasis is on how people see and understand the world around them. Attention is given to the ways in which students tackle the studying of a text, using the distinction introduced by Marton and Saljo between a deep-level and a surface-level approach. Also investigated is the extent to which these study strategies can be related to the views of students on learning itself (learning conceptions) and the quality of the learning outcome. It turned out that a learning outcome of relatively high quality must be especially associated with deep-level approach and a constructive learning conception.
Wireless Network Emulation System (WiNE)

Abstract : Costly decisions about which wireless networking technologies to develop are currently being based largely on results from high-level simulation tools. The FCS-C program, for instance, used high-level simulation tools to select the network and radio software for final development and demonstration. To mitigate risk, there needs to be lab-based tools that provide more accurate assessment than simulation but at far less cost than field testing. Our approach to this problem is to develop a tool that emulates a field-test environment in the lab, so technologies under consideration can migrate from coarse simulation models to actual code and tested "live," in real-time, over a high-fidelity virtual wireless channel environment. Our current solution is the Wireless Network Emulator (WiNE). This report summarizes the development and testing that was conducted under this program. Notable achievements include the development of the first integrated prototype of the embedded distributed simulation engine, accompanied by a wonderful graphical user interface; and the development of detailed network, traffic, mobility, and environment models patterned after the FCS-C baseline field tests conducted at the Naval base in Lakehurst, NJ. Future work under consideration includes improvements in platform stability, support for HLA, new simulation models (specifically underwater and hybrid sensor networks), expanding the library of propagation, radio, and MAC models, and the development of a diverse set of virtual worlds.
Precoder Design for Multi-Antenna Partial Decode-and-Forward (PDF) Cooperative Systems with Statistical CSIT and MMSE-SIC Receivers

Cooperative communication is an important technology in next generation wireless networks. Aside from conventional amplify-and-forward (AF) and decode-and-forward (DF) protocols, the partial decode-and-forward (PDF) protocol is an alternative relaying scheme that is especially promising for scenarios in which the relay node cannot reliably decode the complete source message. However, there are several important issues to be addressed regarding the application of PDF protocols. In this paper, we propose a PDF protocol and MIMO precoder designs at the source and relay nodes. The precoder designs are adapted based on statistical channel state information for correlated MIMO channels, and matched to practical minimum mean-square-error successive interference cancelation (MMSE-SIC) receivers at the relay and destination nodes. We show that under similar settings, the proposed MIMO precoder design with PDF protocol and MMSE-SIC receivers achieves substantial performance enhancement compared with conventional baselines.
Agency and abjection in the closet: the voices (and silences) of black queer male teachers

While black queer educators could conceivably play a critical role in disrupting black queer marginality in educational settings, relatively little is known about their experiences. Drawing upon findings from a broader qualitative study on black male teachers in an urban school district in the United States, this article explores how five black queer male educators negotiated pressures to keep their queerness ‘in the closet. ’ Although remaining in the closet left these men vulnerable to homophobic surveillance, it also enabled them to demonstrate racially mediated forms of agency within school settings. By complicating constructions of the closet as an abject social positionality for queer educators, this article considers the possible affordances of the closet for black queer teachers while also underscoring the need for institutionally sanctioned interventions against homophobia in urban educational settings.
A hybrid approach for optimizing planar triangular meshes

Modified Direct Method (MDM) is an iterative scheme based on Jacobi iterations for smoothing planar meshes [4]. The basic idea behind MDM is to make any triangular element be as close to an equilateral triangle as possible. Based on the MDM, a length-weighted MDM is proposed and then combined with edge swapping. In length-weighted MDM, weights of each neighboring node of a smoothed node are determined by the length of its opposite edge. Also, the MDM, Laplacian smoothing and length-weighted MDM are all combined with edge swapping, and then implemented and compared on both structured and unstructured triangular meshes. Examples show that length-weighted MDM is better than the MDM and Laplacian smoothing for structured mesh but worse for unstructured mesh. The hybrid approach of combining length-weighted MDM and edge swapping is much better and can obtain more even optimized meshes than other two hybrid approaches.
Neural Systems for Rapid Automatized Naming in Skilled Readers: Unraveling the RAN-Reading Relationship

The majority of children and adults with reading disabilities exhibit pronounced difficulties on naming-speed measures such as tests of rapid automatized naming (RAN). RAN tasks require speeded naming of serially presented stimuli and share key characteristics with reading, but different versions of the RAN task vary in their sensitivity: The RAN letters task successfully predicts reading ability, whereas the RAN objects task does not reliably predict reading after kindergarten. In this study we used functional magnetic resonance imaging to evaluate the neural substrates that may underlie performance on these tasks. In two scans during the same test session, adult, average readers covertly rapidly named objects or letters or passively viewed a fixation matrix of plus signs. For both rapid naming tasks compared with fixation, activation was found in neural areas associated with eye movement control and attention as well as in a network of structures previously implicated in reading tasks. This reading network included inferior frontal cortex, temporo-parietal areas, and the ventral visual stream. Whereas the inferior frontal areas of the network were similarly activated for both letters and objects, activation in the posterior areas varied by task. The letters task caused greater activation in the angular gyrus, superior parietal lobule, and medial extrastriate areas, whereas object naming only preferentially activated an area of the fusiform gyrus. These results confirm that RAN tasks recruit a network of neural structures also involved in more complex reading tasks and suggest that the RAN letters task specifically pinpoints key components of this network.
Array imaging using intensity-only measurements

We introduce a new approach for narrow band array imaging of localized scatterers from intensity-only measurements by considering the possibility of reconstructing the positions and reflectivities of the scatterers exactly from only partial knowledge of the array data, since we assume that phase information is not available. We reformulate this intensity-only imaging problem as a non-convex optimization problem and show that we can have exact recovery by minimizing the rank of a positive semidefinite matrix associated with the unknown reflectivities. Since this optimization problem is NP-hard and is computationally intractable, we replace the rank of the matrix by its nuclear norm, the sum of its singular values, which is a convex programming problem that can be solved in polynomial time. Numerical experiments explore the robustness of this approach, which recovers sparse reflectivity vectors exactly as solutions of a convex optimization problem.
The “New Environmental Paradigm” in a Mexican Community

Abstract A sample of 422 Mexicans from a medium-sized city responded to the New Environmental Paradigm-Human Exception Paradigm (NEP-HEP) scale, which assesses peoples' beliefs about human-environment relations. The NEP scale contains questions referring to the need for a “natural balance” and “limits to human impact on nature. ” In contrast, implicit in the HEP scale is a view of humankind as different from and with control over nature. The responses of the interviewees revealed higher levels of adherence to the NEP than to the HEP. However, confirmatory factor analysis showed the covariances between pro-NEP and pro-HEP factors to be high and significant, indicating that the participants did not see the two paradigms as mutually exclusive, as do members of some industrialized societies. The results point to a more holistic view of human relations with the environment, in contrast to the dualistic vision of some western countries.
OntoSeg: A Novel Approach to Text Segmentation Using Ontological Similarity

Text segmentation (TS) aims at dividing long text into coherent segments which reflect the subtopic structure of the text. It is beneficial to many natural language processing tasks, such as Information Retrieval (IR) and document summarisation. Current approaches to text segmentation are similar in that they all use word-frequency metrics to measure the similarity between two regions of text, so that a document is segmented based on the lexical cohesion between its words. Various NLP tasks are now moving towards the semantic web and ontologies, such as ontology-based IR systems, to capture the conceptualizations associated with user needs and contents. Text segmentation based on lexical cohesion between words is hence not sufficient anymore for such tasks. This paper proposes OntoSeg, a novel approach to text segmentation based on the ontological similarity between text blocks. The proposed method uses ontological similarity to explore conceptual relations between text segments and a Hierarchical Agglomerative Clustering (HAC) algorithm to represent the text as a tree-like hierarchy that is conceptually structured. The rich structure of the created tree further allows the segmentation of text in a linear fashion at various levels of granularity. The proposed method was evaluated on a wellknown dataset, and the results show that using ontological similarity in text segmentation is very promising. Also we enhance the proposed method by combining ontological similarity with lexical similarity and the results show an enhancement of the segmentation quality.
Financial Liberalization, Bank Crises and Growth: Assessing the Links

This paper studies the effects of financial liberalization and banking crises on growth. It shows that financial liberalization spurs on average economic growth. Banking crises are harmful for growth, but to a lesser extent in countries with open financial systems and good institutions. The positive effect of financial liberalization is robust to different definitions. While the removal of capital account restrictions is effective by increasing financial depth, equity market liberalization affects growth directly. The empirical analysis is performed through GMM dynamic panel data estimations on a panel of 90 countries observed in the period 1975-1999.
Adaptive inverse filtering of room acoustics

Equalization techniques for high order, multichannel, FIR systems are important for dereverberation of speech observed in reverberation using multiple microphones. In this case the multichannel system represents the room impulse responses (RIRs). The existence of near-common zeros in multichannel RIRs can slow down the convergence rate of adaptive inverse filtering algorithms. In this paper, the effect of common and near-common zeros on both the closed-form and the adaptive inverse filtering algorithms is studied. An adaptive shortening algorithm of room acoustics is presented based on this study.