Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Galectin-4 Controls Intestinal Inflammation by Selective Regulation of Peripheral and Mucosal T Cell Apoptosis and Cell Cycle

Galectin-4 is a carbohydrate-binding protein belonging to the galectin family. Here we provide novel evidence that galectin-4 is selectively expressed and secreted by intestinal epithelial cells and binds potently to activated peripheral and mucosal lamina propria T-cells at the CD3 epitope. The carbohydrate-dependent binding of galectin-4 at the CD3 epitope is fully functional and inhibited T cell activation, cycling and expansion. Galectin-4 induced apoptosis of activated peripheral and mucosal lamina propria T cells via calpain-, but not caspase-dependent, pathways. Providing further evidence for its important role in regulating T cell function, galectin-4 blockade by antisense oligonucleotides reduced TNF-alpha inhibitor induced T cell death. Furthermore, in T cells, galectin-4 reduced pro-inflammatory cytokine secretion including IL-17. In a model of experimental colitis, galectin-4 ameliorated mucosal inflammation, induced apoptosis of mucosal T-cells and decreased the secretion of pro-inflammatory cytokines. Our results show that galectin-4 plays a unique role in the intestine and assign a novel role of this protein in controlling intestinal inflammation by a selective induction of T cell apoptosis and cell cycle restriction. Conclusively, after defining its biological role, we propose Galectin-4 is a novel anti-inflammatory agent that could be therapeutically effective in diseases with a disturbed T cell expansion and apoptosis such as inflammatory bowel disease.
Americas Conference on Information Systems ( AMCIS ) 2008 Mediated Internet Experience for Senior Citizens

Survey results from the Pew Internet American Life Project indicate that the demography of senior citizens that conduct activities on the Internet is rapidly growing and vulnerable to online privacy violations. Their enhanced vulnerability stems from their trusting nature, a characteristic of their times and culture. Since the Internet related threats such as phishing, spamming, etc., are still research issues, a purely technical solution, although desirable, is currently not viable. In this paper, we view the problem through the trust prism and argue for a socio-technical solution to help senior citizens conduct their online activities safely. We propose the conceptual outlines of a trust based framework for a Mediated Internet Experience (MINE) for senior citizens residing in a community center. The framework uses a trust model based on Bayesian Network modeling to help assign trust levels to Internet sites and recommend them for further transactions. Towards a realistic expansion and implementation of the proposed framework and trust model, we propose to conduct surveys and statistical analysis.
Segregated by neighbourhoods? A portrait of ethnic diversity in the neighbourhoods of the Accra Metropolitan Area, Ghana

Studies of urban ethnicity have portrayed ethnic groups as initially concentrating in locations where they live in relatively exclusive residential areas containing few members of other groups. This concentration into ethnic enclaves is commonly regarded as a result of disadvantage and discrimination in the labour and housing markets, coupled with a desire for residential concentration to promote and guarantee group cultural, socioeconomic and physical security. To what extent do the neighbourhoods of Accra Metropolitan Area reflect these urban ethnicity patterns, and what are the factors shaping the concentration of ethnic groups in the city? Using the Location Quotient Index based on census data, the paper examines the degree of ethnic diversity and concentration in the neighbourhoods of Accra. The findings of the study reveal that Accra is not following a Western model of segregation, neither is there a single model of African segregation, but rather many African trajectories. Economic segregation is the organising force underlying residential segregation in Accra, and this operates through several social markers, one of which remains the ethnic history of migration to Accra. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Tackling Duhemian Problems in Neuroimaging : An Alternative to Skeptical Approaches in Philosophy of Cognitive Science

Duhem’s problem arises in different fields of science, especially in contexts where the tools and procedures of measurement and analysis are numerous and highly complex. Several philosophers of cognitive science, as well as cognitive scientists, have pointed to its manifestations in fMRI as grounds for skepticism regarding the epistemic value of neuroimaging results. I offer an alternative approach to neuroimaging, based on Deborah Mayo’s error-statistical account, to address Duhemian arguments for skepticism of neuroimaging in philosophy of cognitive science. Duhem's problem in fMRI is more fruitfully approached in terms of error probabilities as formulated by Mayo. This is illustrated in examples such as the use of probabilistic brain atlases, comparison of different preprocessing protocols with respect to their error characteristics, and statistical modeling of fMRI data. These examples demonstrate the ways in which we can better understand and formulate the general methodological problem and direct the way toward more balanced approaches to neuroimaging in philosophy of cognitive science that will more accurately identify what to be skeptical about and what epistemic contribution neuroimaging can reliably provide. Duhem’s problem arises when a scientist does an experiment, or a series of experiments, to test some hypothesis H and gets a result that does not agree with the hypothesis. One construal of the problem is to think of it in terms of a modus tollens of the type Popper discussed: If hypothesis H, then data e. Not-e. Therefore, not-H. Of course, in actual scientific practice, things do not work this way. It is rather like this: If H1, H2, H3,. , Hn and A1, A2, A3,. ,An, then e. Not-e. Therefore, not-H1 or not-H2 . , or not-A1 or not-A2. where H1 through Hn and A1 through An are auxiliary hypotheses and assumptions involved in the experiment that yielded not-e. The latter inference is the only one that deductively follows. Thus, we do not know if it is the hypothesis that we should blame for
Strategy, Distinctive Competence, and Organizational Performance.

June 1980, volume 25 This study examines relationships among strategy, distinctive competence, and organizational performance. The analysis focuses on the perceptions of top managers in four industries (plastics, semiconductors, automotives, and air transportation). Findings indicate that these managers perceive four strategy types, Defender, Prospector, Analyzer, and Reactor, to be present within their industry. Defenders, Prospectors, and Analyzers all show competence in general and financial management. Beyond these two functions, Defenders and Prospectors have identifiable but different configurations of distinctive competence, while Analyzers' special capabilities are considerably less apparent. Reactors, as expected, have no consistent pattern of distinctive competence. Finally, although the data are only suggestive, Defenders, Prospectors, and Analyzers consistently outperform Reactors in competitive industries, but not in an industry that is highly regulated. *
Proactive Control Processes in Event-Based Prospective Memory: Evidence From Intraindividual Variability and Ex-Gaussian Analyses

The present study implemented an individual differences approach in conjunction with response time (RT) variability and distribution modeling techniques to better characterize the cognitive control dynamics underlying ongoing task cost (i.e., slowing) and cue detection in event-based prospective memory (PM). Three experiments assessed the relation between proactive control ability, ex-Gaussian parameter estimates (&mgr; and &tgr;), intraindividual variability in responding (coefficient of variation, CoV), and PM cue detection. Experiment 1 examined these relations using a standard nonfocal PM paradigm. Experiments 2 and 3 further assessed how PM importance and PM cue focality, respectively, influenced performance. Across all experiments, nonfocal PM was associated with increases in all cost measures, but only &mgr; reliably predicted cue detection. Importance instructions and focal PM cues selectively increased and decreased &mgr; cost, respectively, relative to the standard nonfocal condition. These findings suggest that &mgr; cost may reflect a target-checking process that benefits cue detection and produces slowing throughout the entire ongoing task. Additionally, across all experiments proactive control was positively associated with &mgr; cost and cue detection, and generally negatively associated with variability cost (&tgr; and CoV). These findings suggest that natural variation in proactive control ability may affect reliance on more efficacious monitoring processes that facilitates cue detection. Furthermore, variability in responding may have little influence on successful PM. The results from the current study highlight the utility of RT variability and distribution analyses in understanding PM costs and have important implications for extant theories of PM concerning the cognitive control processes underlying cue detection.
Linked data based semantic similarity and data mining

As a part of the Semantic Web, Linked data is used to connect and share related data on the Web. Compared with traditional Web documents, it has following advantages: more structural; easily understood by humans; describing the things rather than documents or pages; stronger associations. For these reasons, it is more suitable for information search and data mining. In this paper, we proposed a novel approach for semantic similarity between linked data based on lexical taxonomy and corpus statistics. Our approach has been empirically tested by the linked data of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). The experimental results show a good performance in finding and recommending similar herbs in TCM.
The World System of Englishes: Accounting for the transnational importance of mobile and mediated vernaculars

Contact between and mutual influences among varieties of standard and non-standard English have always been a central concern in research on World Englishes. In a mobile and globalising world such contacts are by no means restricted to diffusion of features in face-to-face interaction, across contiguous territories in space or up and down the sociolinguistic scale. In order to better represent and understand the complex relationships obtaining between varieties of standard and non-standard English in the contemporary “English language complex” (McArthur 2003: 56; Mesthrie and Bhatt 2008: 1–3), the present paper proposes a new theoretical model, based on language systems theory (de Swaan 2002, 2010). While the model is not designed to supersede existing alternatives, such as the Kachruvian (1982) Circles, it will nevertheless complement them in important ways, chiefly because it is better equipped to handle uses of English in domains beyond the post-colonial nation state. The “World System of Englishes” model was developed in the course of the author’s work on the use of pidgins and creoles in web forums serving the post-colonial West African and Caribbean diasporas. The way Nigerian Pidgin figures in the creation of a globalised digital ethnolinguistic repertoire will hence serve as an illustration of its usefulness.
Scott 2 mutant-RNA-dependent RNA polymerase ArabidopsisMicroRNAs and other small RNAs enriched in the data

Access the most recent version at doi: 2006 16: 1276-1288; originally published online Sep 5, 2006; Genome Res. Poethig, Ian R. Henderson, Steven E. Jacobsen, Wenzhong Wang, Pamela J. Green and Blake C. Meyers Cheng Lu, Karthik Kulkarni, Frédéric F. Souret, Ramesh MuthuValliappan, Shivakundan Singh Tej, R. Scott 2 mutant RNA-dependent RNA polymerase Arabidopsis MicroRNAs and other small RNAs enriched in the
Antigen Presenting Cell-Mediated Expansion of Human Umbilical Cord Blood Yields Log-Scale Expansion of Natural Killer Cells with Anti-Myeloma Activity

Natural killer (NK) cells are important mediators of anti-tumor immunity and are active against several hematologic malignancies, including multiple myeloma (MM). Umbilical cord blood (CB) is a promising source of allogeneic NK cells but large scale ex vivo expansion is required for generation of clinically relevant CB-derived NK (CB-NK) cell doses. Here we describe a novel strategy for expanding NK cells from cryopreserved CB units using artificial antigen presenting feeder cells (aAPC) in a gas permeable culture system. After 14 days, mean fold expansion of CB-NK cells was 1848-fold from fresh and 2389-fold from cryopreserved CB with >95% purity for NK cells (CD56+/CD3−) and less than 1% CD3+ cells. Though surface expression of some cytotoxicity receptors was decreased, aAPC-expanded CB-NK cells exhibited a phenotype similar to CB-NK cells expanded with IL-2 alone with respect to various inhibitory receptors, NKG2C and CD94 and maintained strong expression of transcription factors Eomesodermin and T-bet. Furthermore, CB-NK cells formed functional immune synapses with and demonstrated cytotoxicity against various MM targets. Finally, aAPC-expanded CB-NK cells showed significant in vivo activity against MM in a xenogenic mouse model. Our findings introduce a clinically applicable strategy for the generation of highly functional CB-NK cells which can be used to eradicate MM.
Mapping Aboveground Biomass in Northern Japanese Forests Using the ALOS PRISM Digital Surface Model

We tested the performance of the stereo observations of the Panchromatic Remote-sensing Instrument for Stereo Mapping (PRISM) onboard the Advanced Land Observing Satellite (ALOS) in the mapping of forest aboveground biomass (AGB) in Japan. Digital canopy height models (DCHMs), which are differences between PRISM digital surface models and surveying-based digital terrain models (DTMs), were compared to in situ AGB measurements of several forest types (number of stands: 28; average stand size: 0.54 ha; stand size range: 0.25-3.00 ha). DCHM values exhibited a significant correlation with AGB (r = 0.66-0.87; five different DCHMs), and the root-mean-square error and bias of the regression model evaluated by the leave-one-out cross-validation were 37.2-57.8t/ha(22.1%-32.6%) and-0.11-1.89 t/ha, respectively. There was no saturation in the relationship between DCHM and AGB (AGB range: 19-332 t/ha). The correlations between DCHM and mean canopy height (r = 0.17-0.52) and between DCHM and Lorey's height (r = 0.26-0.66) were weaker than the correlation between DCHM and AGB. The PRISM AGB distribution estimated by the regression model was consistent with a tree density map produced from aerial photos. Comparison to Phased Array-type L-band Synthetic Aperture Radar (PALSAR) data showed that the PRISM DCHMs can estimate high AGB over the saturation level of PALSAR backscattering coefficient, i.e., 100-200 t/ha. The results described here demonstrate that the PRISM DCHMs are capable of wall-to-wall AGB estimation at 50-m resolution. This approach will be useful for improving the performance of satellite-based AGB estimation when an accurate DTM is available.
Optimal analog trim techniques for improving the linearity of pipeline ADCs

This paper investigates the issue of capacitor trimming to improve the linearity of pipeline ADCs that use switched capacitor sub-DACs. Capacitor mismatches create linearity errors, which deteriorate THD, SINAD and SFDR performance of the ADC in communication applications. Measurement of capacitor mismatches and generation of trim capacitor values are discussed. The derivations are for 2-bit-per-stage pipeline ADC architectures and they can easily be extended for any pipelined ADC. Finally, the effectiveness of the overall capacitor trimming process in terms of cost and performance is analyzed for a 12 bit 40 MSPS ADC.
Acoustic echoes reveal room shape

Imagine that you are blindfolded inside an unknown room. You snap your fingers and listen to the room’s response. Can you hear the shape of the room? Some people can do it naturally, but can we design computer algorithms that hear rooms? We show how to compute the shape of a convex polyhedral room from its response to a known sound, recorded by a few microphones. Geometric relationships between the arrival times of echoes enable us to “blindfoldedly” estimate the room geometry. This is achieved by exploiting the properties of Euclidean distance matrices. Furthermore, we show that under mild conditions, first-order echoes provide a unique description of convex polyhedral rooms. Our algorithm starts from the recorded impulse responses and proceeds by learning the correct assignment of echoes to walls. In contrast to earlier methods, the proposed algorithm reconstructs the full 3D geometry of the room from a single sound emission, and with an arbitrary geometry of the microphone array. As long as the microphones can hear the echoes, we can position them as we want. Besides answering a basic question about the inverse problem of room acoustics, our results find applications in areas such as architectural acoustics, indoor localization, virtual reality, and audio forensics.
Optimising retention through multiple study opportunities over days: The benefit of an expanding schedule of repetitions

Few studies have investigated how scheduling repeated studies of the same material over several days influences its subsequent retention. The study-phase retrieval hypothesis predicts that, under these circumstances, expanding intervals between repetitions will promote the greatest likelihood that the participant will be reminded of previous occurrences of the item, thus leading to a benefit for subsequent recall. In the present article, participants studied vocabulary pairs that were repeated according to one of three schedules. In the expanding schedule, pairs were presented on days 1, 2 and 13; in the uniform schedule, on days 1, 7 and 13; and in the contracting schedule, on days 1, 12 and 13. Cued-recall was assessed after a retention interval (RI) of 2, 6 or 13 days. Consistent with predictions, the expanding schedule generally led to better performance than the other schedules. However, further analyses suggested that the benefit of an expanding schedule may be greater when the RI is longer.
Faceted Taxonomy-based Information Management

Faceted indexing and searching are being increasingly studied in the literature and used for real-life applications, e.g., for publishing heterogeneous museum collections on the Web. In this paper, we discuss in brief several aspects of managing (faceted) taxonomy-based information sources. Specifically, we discuss (i) the semantic description of faceted taxonomies, based on the compound term composition algebra (CTCA), (ii) the revision of CTCA expressions, as faceted taxonomies evolve, (Hi) the dynamic generation of navigational trees (and other applications of CTCA), and (iv) the integration and personalization of taxonomy-based sources.
Radiative transfer equation for predicting light propagation in biological media: comparison of a modified finite volume method, the Monte Carlo technique, and an exact analytical solution

Abstract. We examine the accuracy of a modified finite volume method compared to analytical and Monte Carlo solutions for solving the radiative transfer equation. The model is used for predicting light propagation within a two-dimensional absorbing and highly forward-scattering medium such as biological tissue subjected to a collimated light beam. Numerical simulations for the spatially resolved reflectance and transmittance are presented considering refractive index mismatch with Fresnel reflection at the interface, homogeneous and two-layered media. Time-dependent as well as steady-state cases are considered. In the steady state, it is found that the modified finite volume method is in good agreement with the other two methods. The relative differences between the solutions are found to decrease with spatial mesh refinement applied for the modified finite volume method obtaining <2.4%. In the time domain, the fourth-order Runge-Kutta method is used for the time semi-discretization of the radiative transfer equation. An agreement among the modified finite volume method, Runge-Kutta method, and Monte Carlo solutions are shown, but with relative differences higher than in the steady state.
Local linear spectral unmixing via cluster analysis and non-negative matrix factorization for hyperspectral (CHRIS/PROBA) imagery

We present a novel approach for spectral unmixing in hyperspectral imagery called local linear spectral unmixing (LLSU). Our new proposal relies on an existing strategy for non-linear data modelling where a general non-linear model is approximated via several piecewise linear models. The algorithm is the result of hybridizing two well-known strategies for exploratory high-dimensional data analysis: cluster analysis and non-negative matrix factorization. It has been proposed to answer the limitations of global linear unmixing models which are widely used for spectral unmixing. Our strategy is to first group similar pixels from the hyperspctral image via cluster analysis and then to consider a local linear unmixing model for each cluster in order to obtain the constituent endmembers. Subsequently, the resulted local endmembers from each cluster of mixed pixels are at their turn clustered based on their spectral similarity; the final solution is given by the clusters' centroids.
A stochastic map for uncertain spatial relationships

In this paper we will describe a representation for spatial relationships which makes explicit their inherent uncertainty. We will show ways to manipulate them to obtain estimates of relationships and associated uncertainties not explicitly given, and show how decisions to sense or act can be made a priori based on those estimates. We will show how new constraint information, usually obtained by measurement, can be used to update the world model of relationships consistently, and in some situations, optimally. The framework we describe relies only on well-known state estimation methods.
The Influence of Speed, Grease Type, and Temperature on Radial Contaminant Particle Migration in a Double Restriction Seal

Microparticle image velocimetry (μPIV) is used to measure the grease velocity profile in small seal-like geometries and the radial migration of contaminant particles is predicted. In the first part, the influence of shaft speed, grease type, and temperatures on the flow of lubricating greases in a narrow double restriction sealing pocket is evaluated. Such geometries can be found in, for example, labyrinth-type seals. In a wide pocket the velocity profile is one-dimensional and the Herschel-Bulkley model is used. In a narrow pocket, it is shown by the experimental results that the side walls have a significant influence on the grease flow, implying that the grease velocity profile is two-dimensional. In this area, a single empirical grease parameter for the rheology is sufficient to describe the velocity profile. In the second part, the radial migration of contaminant particles through the grease is evaluated. Centrifugal forces acting on a solid spherical particle are calculated from the grease velocity profile. Consequently, particles migrate to a larger radius and finally settle when the grease viscosity becomes large due to the low shear rate. This behavior is important for the sealing function of the grease in the pocket and relubrication.