Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Neural crest–derived cells with stem cell features can be traced back to multiple lineages in the adult skin

Given their accessibility, multipotent skin-derived cells might be useful for future cell replacement therapies. We describe the isolation of multipotent stem cell–like cells from the adult trunk skin of mice and humans that express the neural crest stem cell markers p75 and Sox10 and display extensive self-renewal capacity in sphere cultures. To determine the origin of these cells, we genetically mapped the fate of neural crest cells in face and trunk skin of mouse. In whisker follicles of the face, many mesenchymal structures are neural crest derived and appear to contain cells with sphere-forming potential. In the trunk skin, however, sphere-forming neural crest–derived cells are restricted to the glial and melanocyte lineages. Thus, self-renewing cells in the adult skin can be obtained from several neural crest derivatives, and these are of distinct nature in face and trunk skin. These findings are relevant for the design of therapeutic strategies because the potential of stem and progenitor cells in vivo likely depends on their nature and origin.
Unproctored Online Testing: Environmental Conditions and Validity

Applicants for entry-level sales associate positions at a professional services and publishing company (N 1⁄4 608) completed an online test battery that comprised a cognitive ability (business reasoning) test and a noncognitive assessment (sales orientation) published by PSI. The test battery was administered in a two-stage process: (a) remote unproctored administrationof thenoncognitive test used as a prescreen with a low cut score, HR staff had phone contact with examinees to initiate the testing session; and (b) on-site proctored administration of the cognitive ability test, in which the test was administered by HR staff at corporate offices. A small sample of applicants completed both the cognitive and the noncognitive tests on site under proctored conditions. At the conclusion of each testing session, applicants completed a test environment survey (TES), in which they used a 4-point scale (11⁄4 poor, 21⁄4 adequate, 31⁄4 good, 41⁄4 excellent) to evaluate seven environmental factors pertaining to their testing sessions: lighting, temperature, computer system/ equipment, noise level, workspace, testing staff, and overall. For those who were hired, employee turnover data were collected over a 12-month period. The turnover base rate was 26.1% in this study.
The Role of Affect in Naturalistic Decision Making

The field of naturalistic decision making (NDM) assumes a “cold” cognitive model in that nonemotional, valence-neutral cues and information are predicted to influence decision making in identifiable ways. Judgment and decision-making research over the past 10 to 15 years, however, has greatly enhanced knowledge of the ways in which affect that is present at the time of decision making influences how people make decisions—specifically, how they process information, how they respond to risk, and which outcomes they prefer. The purpose of this article is to review relevant aspects of the literature on affect and decision making and to present the argument that NDM researchers need to be cognizant of the potential impact of affect on decision processes to adequately describe and predict expert decision making.
Memory effect evaluation and predistortion of power amplifiers

This paper introduces the envelope model reference adaptive control construct to digital predistortion of RF power amplifiers. It is used to formulate a block level predistortion algorithm that compensates for the both memoryless compression characteristics and deterministic memory effects. An iterative technique of successive approximations is used to obtain the memory effect inverse function. The algorithm is applied to two amplifiers and convergence is demonstrated. Qualitative results (instantaneous input/output plots) and quantitative results (the sequence and ensemble RMS error over the iteration sequence) are presented.
Encapsidation of turnip crinkle virus is defined by a specific packaging signal and RNA size

A protoplast infection assay has been used to reliably examine the viral RNA encapsidation of turnip crinkle virus (TCV). Analysis of the encapsidation of various mutant viral RNAs revealed that a 186-nucleotide (nt) region at the 3' end of the coat protein (CP) gene, with a bulged hairpin loop of 28 nt as its most essential element, was indispensable for TCV RNA encapsidation. When RNA fragments containing the 186-nt region were used to replace the CP gene of a different virus, tomato bushy stunt virus, the resulting chimeric viral RNAs were encapsidated into TCV virions. Furthermore, analysis of the encapsidated chimeric RNA species established that the RNA size was an important determinant of the TCV assembly process.
Skin Conductance Fear Conditioning and Psychopathic Personality Traits : A Twin Study

Previous studies have shown a relationship among fearlessness, psychopathy, aggression and antisocial behavior. This study examined the phenotypic and genetic relationships among components of the skin conductance fear conditioning task and psychopathic personality traits. Data were retrieved from a longitudinal study; the Twin Study of Risk Factor for Antisocial Behavior at the University of Southern California. The present study included data from the ongoing Wave 5. Results indicated the importance of both genetic and non-shared environmental influences in explaining the variance in the unconditioned response. Consistent with previous research, the results showed that individuals who displayed higher levels of manipulative and deceitful traits also showed deficits in fear conditioning.
Connected allocation to Poisson points in R^2

This note answers one question in [math.PR/0505668], concerning the connected allocation for the Poisson process in R^2. The proposed solution makes use of the Riemann map from the plane minus the minimal spanning forest of the Poisson point process to the halfplane. A picture of a numerically simulated example is included.
Explaining Eye Movements in the Visual Search of Varying Density Layouts

This research advances computational cognitive modeling of visual search, and the synergistic relationship between cognitive modeling and eye tracking. The paper presents cognitive models of the perceptual, cognitive, and motor processing involved in the visual search of words in structured layouts that vary in density. The layouts are allsparse, all-dense, or mixed. A principled approach is taken to account for eye movement data, specifically the mean number of fixations per trial and mean fixation durations. A random search strategy without replacement is used as a base model. The best-fitting model assumes that people examine two to three items per fixation regardless of the density. A new implementation of the EPIC cognitive architecture is used to build the models in this study. Modeling adjustments necessary to account for the data are discussed.
Expression Profiles of PIWIL2 Short Isoforms Differ in Testicular Germ Cell Tumors of Various Differentiation Subtypes

PIWI family proteins have recently emerged as essential contributors in numerous biological processes including germ cell development, stem cell maintenance and epigenetic reprogramming. Expression of some of the family members has been shown to be elevated in tumors. In particular, PIWIL2 has been probed as a potential neoplasia biomarker in many cancers in humans. Previously, PIWIL2 was shown to be expressed in most tumours as a set of its shorter isoforms. In this work, we demonstrated the presence of its 60 kDa (PL2L60A) and 80 kDa (PL2L80A) isoforms in testicular cancer cell lines. We also ascertained the transcriptional boundaries of mRNAs and alternative promoter regions for these PIWIL2 isoforms. Further, we probed a range of testicular germ cell tumor (TGCT) samples and found PIWIL2 to be predominantly expressed as PL2L60A in most of them. Importantly, the levels of both PL2L60A mRNA and protein products were found to vary depending on the differentiation subtype of TGCTs, i.e., PL2L60A expression is significantly higher in undifferentiated seminomas and appears to be substantially decreased in mixed and nonseminomatous TGCTs. The higher level of PL2L60A expression in undifferentiated TGCTs was further validated in the model system of retinoic acid induced differentiation in NT2/D1 cell line. Therefore, both PL2L60A mRNA and protein abundance could serve as an additional marker distinguishing between seminomas and nonseminomatous tumors with different prognosis and therapy approaches.
Breaking and Fixing VoLTE: Exploiting Hidden Data Channels and Mis-implementations

Long Term Evolution (LTE) is becoming the dominant cellular networking technology, shifting the cellular network away from its circuit-switched legacy towards a packet-switched network that resembles the Internet. To support voice calls over the LTE network, operators have introduced Voice-over-LTE (VoLTE), which dramatically changes how voice calls are handled, both from user equipment and infrastructure perspectives. We find that this dramatic shift opens up a number of new attack surfaces that have not been previously explored. To call attention to this matter, this paper presents a systematic security analysis. Unlike the traditional call setup, the VoLTE call setup is controlled and performed at the Application Processor (AP), using the SIP over IP. A legitimate user who has control over the AP can potentially control and exploit the call setup process to establish a VoLTE channel. This combined with the legacy accounting policy (e.g., unlimited voice and the separation of data and voice) leads to a number of free data channels. In the process of unveiling the free data channels, we identify a number of additional vulnerabilities of early VoLTE implementations, which lead to serious exploits, such as caller spoofing, over-billing, and denial-of-service attacks. We identify the nature of these vulnerabilities and concrete exploits that directly result from the adoption of VoLTE. We also propose immediate countermeasures that can be employed to alleviate the problems. However, we believe that the nature of the problem calls for a more comprehensive solution that eliminates the root causes at mobile devices, mobile platforms, and the core network.
Anxiety, Fears and Depression Related to Hysterectomy

One-hundred and two women undergoing a hysterectomy for reasons other than cancer were interviewed pre-operatively. Fifty-three of them filled out the Spielberger State and Trait Anxiety Scale (STAI). Women who had high anxiety scores were more likely to be depressed, both before and after the operation. Depression occurred also more often in women who had emergency hysterectomies and in women who had expressed, pre-operatively, some fears of possible change in their sexual life after the operation.
Digital Subtraction Arthrography of the Prosthetic Hip

Digital subtraction techniques are easily adapted to the evaluation of loosening in total hip prostheses, allowing real time review of injection dynamics and data manipulation after the study. We have successfully used both standard radiographic and digital imaging techniques in the evaluation of 15 prosthetic hip joints. The digital results are comparable to and often better than those of standard radiographic techniques for the evaluation of loosening in total hip prostheses.
Larger feature set approach for machine translation in IWSLT 2007

The NTT Statistical Machine Translation System employs a large number of feature functions. First, k-best translation candidates are generated by an efficient decoding method of hierarchical phrase-based translation. Second, the k-best translations are reranked. In both steps, sparse binary fea tures — of the order of millions — are integrated during the search. This paper gives the details of the two steps and shows the results for the Evaluation campaign of the International Workshop on Spoken Language Translation (IWSLT) 2007.
Effi ciency of Citrus Tristeza Virus Isolates in Inducing Early Systemic Infection in Diff erent Citrus Hosts

Citrus tristeza virus (CTV) is the most destructive citrus pathogen. Th e knowledge about how its infectivity is accomplished, time in which CTV causes systemic infection aft er transfer to the host plant and the relation between virus invasion and CTV pathogenicity is very scarce. Th e main objective of this study was to analyse whether diff erent CTV genotypes vary in effi ciency to cause systemic viral infection. Th ree weeks post-inoculation, set of seven host-plant citrus species were checked for CTV systemic infection. Among seven CTV isolates tested, six of them were monophyletic according to the p25 gene and previously biologically characterised. For one polyphyletic virus isolate the pathogenicity was established in this study. Our results showed that the transmission of virus and systemic infection is correlated with pathogenicity of CTV isolates, namely stem-pitting syndrome (SP). In three weeks CTV-SP isolates achieved systemic infection detectible by DTBA serological test. Polyphyletic isolate (composed of Gp 3b and Gp 5) that caused 100% infection, aft er biological characterization showed severe form of SP-syndrome. Monophyletic isolates belonging to Gp4, Gp3a and Gp2, which were determined as SP-CTV isolates, also achieved high percentages of systemic infection, respectively. On the contrary to severe SP isolates, isolates that are not related to appearance of SP disease symptoms were less effi cient in accomplishing systemic virus infection. Th ese results lead us to consider the aggressiveness of SP-CTV isolates as an important factor in processes of accomplishing early systemic plant infection.
Generation of ultrahigh-speed tunable-rate optical pulses using strongly gain-coupled dual-wavelength DFB laser diodes

A novel and simple method to generate a variable-rate, ultrahigh-speed optical pulse train is demonstrated using a dual-wavelength, strongly gain-coupled distributed-feedback laser diode. The repetition rate of the optical pulse train is continuously tunable from 25 to 80 GHz and no high-speed electronics are required in this method.
Molecular diversity of soil and marine 16S rRNA gene sequences related to beta-subgroup ammonia-oxidizing bacteria

We have conducted a preliminary phylogenetic survey of ammonia-oxidizing beta-proteobacteria, using 16S rRNA gene libraries prepared by selective PCR and DNA from acid and neutral soils and polluted and nonpolluted marine sediments. Enrichment cultures were established from samples and analyzed by PCR. Analysis of 111 partial sequences of c. 300 bases revealed that the environmental sequences formed seven clusters, four of which are novel, within the phylogenetic radiation defined by cultured autotrophic ammonia oxidizers. Longer sequences from 13 cluster representatives support their phylogenetic positions relative to cultured taxa. These data suggest that known taxa may not be representative of the ammonia-oxidizing beta-proteobacteria in our samples. Our data provide further evidence that molecular and culture-based enrichment methods can select for different community members. Most enrichments contained novel Nitrosomonas-like sequences whereas novel Nitrosospira-like sequences were more common from gene libraries of soils and marine sediments. This is the first evidence for the occurrence of Nitrosospira-like strains in marine samples. Clear differences between the sequences of soil and marine sediment libraries were detected. Comparison of 16S rRNA sequences from polluted and nonpolluted sediments provided no strong evidence that the community composition was determined by the degree of pollution. Soil clone sequences fell into four clusters, each containing sequences from acid and neutral soils in varying proportions. Our data suggest that some related strains may be present in both samples, but further work is needed to resolve whether there is selection due to pH for particular sequence types.
Segmentation and tracking of cine cardiac MR and CT images using a 3-D deformation model

Multi-slice multi-phase MR and EBT (Ultrafast CT) imaging is increasingly being used as a method for analyzing and diagnosing cardiac function. Segmentation of heart chambers facilitates computation of volume based quantities, as well as ventricular motion analysis. The authors present a 3D physically-based deformable model based approach to segmenting anisotropic cine MR and EBT images. The model has both rigid as well as nonrigid motion components. Past approaches have used deformable models without rigid components or used isotropic CT data. The authors' model adaptively subdivides the mesh in response to the forces extracted from image data. Additionally, the local mesh of the model encodes surface orientation to align the model with the desired edge directions a crucial constraint for distinguishing close anatomical structures. The authors' present results of segmenting multi-slice multi-phase cardiac MR and EBT studies with interslice resolution of 8 mm/slice, and intraslice resolution of 1 mm/pixel. <<ETX>>
An Approach to Text Knowledge Analysis Based on Many-Valued Context

Text knowledge analysis plays a very important role in knowledge processing. In order to find interesting patters, we introduce text analysis into the Formal Concept Analysis(FCA) field. FCA is a valid tool for data ming and knowledge processing. In the paper, we present a method for exacting the conceptual patterns and concept lattice from multiple knowledge sources. The method consists of two steps: the first is to insert some related many-valued contexts(MVCs)(which represent text knowledge) into some corresponding column or cell of other MVC in accordance with certain rules, and then extract formal concepts and concept lattice. Our insertion method not only is semanticpreserving, but adds the dimension of attributes for describing objects. Hence, the discovered concepts have the more richer intents and are more denser in the concept lattice. The paper mainly applied the method to column insertion operation and cell insertion operation, and obtained some propositions, which can be used by knowledge engineers to represent and analyze text knowledge(especially,text objects) and to extract new semantics information or associate rules from concept lattices.
A Family of Single-Stage Switched-Capacitor–Inductor PWM Converters

A family of single-stage-switched-capacitor-inductor converters with different voltage conversion features and similar structures is presented in this paper. Unlike conventional switched-capacitor/switched-inductor converters that are produced by cascade operation, all of the proposed converters are operated in single-stage mode. Though each of the proposed converters employs two energy transfer components, i.e., one switched capacitor and one inductor, energy flowing though the two components both directly come from the input power sources and then is directly released to output terminal. This design can meet the high efficiency requirement and simple structure. A small resonant inductor is also used in these converters to limit the current peak caused by switched capacitors and to improve efficiency. The detailed analysis of circuit operation and design consideration is given. Simulation and experimental results are also provided to verify the performance of the new family of converters.
Close Association Between the Reduction in Myocardial Energy Metabolism and Infarct Size: Dose-Response Assessment of Cyclosporine

Cyclosporine protects the heart against ischemia/reperfusion injury, but its effect on cardiac metabolism is largely unknown. We assessed cyclosporine-induced metabolic changes in the rat heart prior to occlusion using magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) and correlated effects with infarct size in a coronary occlusion/reperfusion model. The two study groups were cyclosporine and cyclosporine + coronary occlusion (n = 20/group). Rats were pretreated with cyclosporine (5, 10, 15, and 25 mg/kg/day) or the vehicle by oral gavage for 3 days (n = 4/dose). On day 4, hearts of rats in the cyclosporine group were excised, and extracted cell metabolites were measured using 1H and 31P MRS. The second group was subjected to 30 min of coronary artery occlusion followed by 24 h of reperfusion. Infarct size and area at risk were measured using a double staining method. In the cyclosporine group, cyclosporine reduced cardiac energy metabolism (ATP:r = −0.89, P < 0.001) via depression of oxidative phosphorylation and the Krebs' cycle in a dose-dependent manner. The decrease of ATP levels was positively correlated with changes of NAD+ (r = 0.89), glutamate (r = 0.95), glutamine (r = 0.84), and glucose concentrations (r = 0.92, all P < 0.002). It was inversely correlated with lactate (r = −0.93,P < 0.001). In the coronary occlusion group, cyclosporine dose dependently reduced the ratio [area of infarct/area of the left ventricle] (r = −0.86,P < 0.01), with 15 mg/kg/day being the most effective cyclosporine dose. The reduction in infarct size correlated with the reduction in oxidative phosphorylation (ATP:r = 0.97; NAD+: r = 0.82, P < 0.01). The reduction in cardiac energy metabolism before occlusion may be the cause of myocardial preservation during ischemia/reperfusion.
Household Arithmetic: a Note

*Lutz Berkner is Professor of History, UCLA. For the last few years most historians analyzing nominative census lists and classifying household types have been using the same basic method of counting. They take a list, code the various combinations of related persons and marital units according to some classification scheme, and produce a frequency distribution of household types as a proportion of all households (typical examples in Laslett
An economical scan design for sequential logic test generation

A method of partial scan design in which the selection of scan flip-flops is aimed at breaking up the cyclic structure of the circuit is presented. Experimental data are given to show that the test generation complexity may grow exponentially with the length of the cycles in the circuit. This complexity grows only linearly with sequential depth. Graph-theoretic algorithms are presented to select a minimal set of flip-flops for eliminating cycles to reduce sequential depth. Tests for the resulting circuit can be efficiently generated by a sequential logic test generator. An independent control of the scan clock allows the insertion of scan sequences within the vector sequence produced by the test generator. Experimental results on a 5000 gate circuit show that a test coverage above 98% could be obtained by scanning just 5% of the flip-flops. In addition, the authors give the design of a scan flip-flop to reduce the input pin and signal routing overheads in a single-clock design. <<ETX>>
Assessment of sperm hyperactivated motility and acrosome reaction can discriminate the use of spermatozoa for conventional in vitro fertilisation or intracytoplasmic sperm injection: Preliminary results

Basic semen analysis is insufficient for determining the fertility potential. The aim of this study was to determine if hyperactivated motility (HAM) and acrosome reaction (AR) can be useful tests for evaluating semen quality during male infertility evaluations and to help the clinician decide whether regular insemination or intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) is preferable during in vitro fertilisation. A prospective study was conducted. Patients with normal sperm according to World Health Organization guidelines who underwent IVF treatment and planned regular insemination were asked to participate. A portion of sperm sample was evaluated for HAM and AR on day of ovum pick up. In HAM assessment, 93.3% of patients with increased HAM had a high fertilisation rate compared with 64% in the group without increased HAM (P = 0.059). For the AR evaluation, 91.7% of samples with a low rate of spontaneous AR had a high fertilisation rate compared with 39.3% in the group with a high rate of spontaneous AR (P = 0.004).