Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Distinct Influence of N-terminal Elements on Neuronal Nitric-oxide Synthase Structure and Catalysis*

Nitric oxide (NO) is a signal molecule produced in animals by three different NO synthases. Of these, only NOS I (neuronal nitric-oxide synthase; nNOS) is expressed as catalytically active N-terminally truncated forms that are missing either an N-terminal leader sequence required for protein-protein interactions or are missing the leader sequence plus three core structural motifs that in other NOS are required for dimer assembly and catalysis. To understand how the N-terminal elements impact nNOS structure-function, we generated, purified, and extensively characterized variants that were missing the N-terminal leader sequence (Δ296nNOS) or missing the leader sequence plus the three core motifs (Δ349nNOS). Eliminating the leader sequence had no impact on nNOS structure or catalysis. In contrast, additional removal of the core elements weakened but did not destroy the dimer interaction, slowed ferric heme reduction and reactivity of a hemedioxy intermediate, and caused a 10-fold poorer affinity toward substrate l-arginine. This created an nNOS variant with slower and less coupled NO synthesis that is predisposed to generate reactive oxygen species along with NO. Our findings help justify the existence of nNOS N-terminal splice variants and identify specific catalytic changes that create functional differences among them.
Decision-Making, the Role of Emotions in Foreign Policy

Long viewed as an obstacle to be overcome in the pursuit of pure rationality, emotions are now widely recognized as a critical part of the decision - making process. As a result, any complete account of foreign policy decision - making must account for how and when emotions impact political decision making. Facing diffi cult issues and multiple constituencies on a daily basis, political decision - makers operate in an environment of near - constant time pressure and stress. How they process information and make judgments involves a complex interplay between affective and cognitive factors. In this article, we present a framework for understanding the different ways in which emotions can enter into the decision - making process and the differential effects of key emotions. (See decision - making , psychological dimensions of foreign policy .)
Improved Combinatory Categorial Grammar Induction with Boundary Words and Bayesian Inference

Combinatory Categorial Grammar (CCG) is an expressive grammar formalism which is able to capture long-range dependencies. However, building large and wide-coverage treebanks for CCG is expensive and time-consuming. In this paper, we focus on the problem of unsupervised CCG induction from plain texts. Based on the baseline model in (Bisk and Hockenmaier, 2012), we propose following two improvements: (1) we utilize boundary part-of-speech (POS) tags to capture lexical information; (2) we perform nonparametric Bayesian inference based on the Pitman-Yor process to learn compact grammars. Experiments on English Penn treebank demonstrate the effectiveness of our boundary model and Bayesian learning.
Radio resource sharing for MTC in LTE-A: An approach based on the bipartite graph

Machine to machine (M2M) communications pose significant challenges to the cellular networks due to its unique features such as the massive number of machine type devices (MTDs) as well as the limited data transmission session. Thus, advanced cellular network releases, such as long-term evolution (LTE) and LTE-Advanced (LTE-A), optimally designed to support human to human (H2H) communications, should cater to M2M communications. In this paper, we consider an M2M/H2H coexistence scenario where a simultaneous access to the spectrum is enabled. Taking the opportunity of the new device to device (D2D) communication paradigm offered in LTE-A and at the aim of enabling an efficient resource sharing, we propose to combine M2M and D2D owing to the MTD low transmit power. First, we formulate the resource sharing problem as a maximization of the sum-rate, problem for which the optimal solution has been proved to be non deterministic polynomial time hard (NP-Hard). Then, we formulate the problem as a novel interference-aware bipartite graph to overcome the computational complexity of the optimal solution. Thus, we consider here a two-phase resource allocation approach. In the first phase, H2H radio resource assignment is performed in a conventional way. In the second phase, we introduce two algorithms, one centralized and one semi-distributed to perform the M2M resource allocation. The computational complexity of both introduced algorithms is of polynomial complexity. Simulation results show that the semi-distributed M2M resource allocation algorithm achieves quite good performance in terms of network aggregate sum-rate with markedly lower communication overhead compared to the centralized one.
The Teenage Liberation Handbook: How to Quit School and Get a Real Life and Education

Introduction: first, a nice little story the note to parents about this book. Part 1 Making the decision: sweet land of liberty school is not for learning what school is for school teachers - the people versus the profession the power and the magic of adolescence versus the insufferable tedium of school and a few other miscellaneous abominations your allies among the rich and famous. Part 2 The first steps: the perhaps delicate parental issue the not necessarily difficult legal issue the importance of vacation getting a social life adults in new light starting out - a sense of the possibilities. Part 3 The tailor-made educational extravanagza: your tailor-made intellectual extravangaza beyond "field trips" - using cultural resources the glorious generalist unschooling science and technology unschooling mathematics unschooling the social sciences unschooling literature and writing unschooling foreign languages unschooling the arts gym, mountains, planet college without school. Part 4 Touching the world - finding good work: beyond fast food apprenticeships and internships volunteering jobs your own business. Appendix: international unschooling resources for everyone.
Bill on demand: South African newspapers fighting the abortion issue in 1995/96

Abstract This study seeks to explore the mediated discourse of the South African abortion debate 1995/96. It is limited to the editorials in 13 of the largest newspapers, totalling a number of 24 editorials. Through a discourse analysis approach, the writer attempts to show how words and argumentation were used to associate the new liberal abortion bill with positive values. The argumentation used by the newspapers can be read as a political discourse that illustrates the South African transformation from apartheid to democracy. Most newspapers spent more space on discussing the abortion debate than the abortion issue. Emotive words were used extensively, and so was the act of othering. Most newspapers argued strongly for the new abortion bill.
Assessment of the potentials and limitations of cortical-based analysis for the integration of structure and function in normal and pathological brains using MRI

The software package Brainvisa (www.brainvisa.tnfo) offers a wide range of possibilities for cortical analysis using its automatic sulci recognition feature. Automated sulci identification is an attractive feature as the manual labelling of the cortical sulci is often challenging even for the experienced neuro-radiologists. This can also be of interest in fMRI studies of individual subjects where activated regions of the cortex can simply be identified using sulcal labels without the need for normalization to an atlas. As it will be explained later in this thesis, normalization to atlas can especially be problematic for pathologic brains. In addition, Brainvisa allows for sulcal morphometry from structural MR images by estimating a wide range of sulcal properties such as size, coordinates, direction, and pattern. Morphometry of abnormal brains has gained huge interest and has been widely used in finding the biomarkers of several neurological diseases or psychiatric disorders. However mainly because of its complexity, only a limited use of sulcal morphometry has been reported so far. With a wide range of possibilities for sulcal morphometry offered by Brainvisa, it is possible to thoroughly investigate the sulcal changes due to the abnormality. However, as any other automated method, Brainvisa can be susceptible to limitations associated with image quality. Factors such as noise, spatial resolution, and so on, can have an impact on the detection of the cortical folds and estimation of their attributes. Hence the robustness of Brainvisa needs to be assessed. This can be done by estimating the reliability and reproducibility of results as well as exploring the changes in results caused by other factors. This thesis is an attempt to investigate the possible benefits of sulci identification and sulcal morphometry for functional and structural MRI studies as well as the limitations of Brainvisa. In addition, the possibility of improvement of activation localization with functional MRI studies is further investigated. This investigation was motivated by a review of other cortical-based analysis methods, namely the cortical surface-based methods, which are discussed in the literature review chapter of this thesis. The application of these approaches in functional MRI data analysis and their potential benefits is used in this investigation.
Early Function of Pax5 (BSAP) before the Pre-B Cell Receptor Stage of B Lymphopoiesis

The formation of the pre-B cell receptor (BCR) corresponds to an important checkpoint in B cell development that selects pro-B (pre-BI) cells expressing a functionally rearranged immunoglobulin μ (Igμ) heavy chain protein to undergo the transition to the pre-B (pre-BII) cell stage. The pre-BCR contains, in addition to Igμ, the surrogate light chains λ5 and VpreB and the signal transducing proteins Igα and Igβ. The absence of one of these pre-BCR components is known to arrest B cell development at the pre-BI cell stage. Disruption of the Pax5 gene, which codes for the B cell–specific activator protein (BSAP), also blocks adult B lymphopoiesis at the pre-BI cell stage. Moreover, expression of the mb-1 (Igα) gene and VH-to-DHJH recombination at the IgH locus are reduced in Pax5-deficient B lymphocytes ∼10- and ∼50-fold, respectively. Here we demonstrate that complementation of these deficiencies in pre-BCR components by expression of functionally rearranged Igμ and chimeric Igμ-Igβ transgenes fails to advance B cell development to the pre-BII cell stage in Pax5 (−/−) mice in contrast to RAG2 (−/−) mice. Furthermore, the pre-BCR is stably expressed on cultured pre-BI cells from Igμ transgenic, Pax5-deficient bone marrow, but is unable to elicit its normal signaling responses. In addition, the early developmental block is unlikely to be caused by the absence of a survival signal, as it could not be rescued by expression of a bcl2 transgene in Pax5-deficient pre-BI cells. Together, these data demonstrate that the absence of Pax5 arrests adult B lymphopoiesis at an early developmental stage that is unresponsive to pre-BCR signaling.
Monitoring of Glucose in Brain, Adipose Tissue, and Peripheral Blood in Patients with Traumatic Brain Injury: A Microdialysis Study

Background: Episodes of hyperglycemia are considered to be a secondary insult in traumatically brain-injured patients and have been shown to be associated with impaired outcome. Intensive insulin therapy to maintain a strict glucose level has been suggested to decrease morbidity and mortality in critically ill patients but this aggressive insulin treatment has been challenged. One aspect of strict glucose control is the risk of developing hypoglycemia. Extracellular intracerebral hypoglycemia monitored by intracerebral microdialysis has been shown to correlate with poor outcome. Monitoring of blood glucose during neurointensive care is important because adequate glucose supply from the systemic circulation is crucial to maintain the brain's glucose demand after brain injury. This study investigates the correlation of glucose levels in peripheral blood, subcutaneous (SC) fat, and extracellular intracerebral tissue in patients with severe traumatic brain injury during neurointensive care. Methods: In this study, we included 12 patients with severe traumatic brain injury. All patients received one microdialysis catheter each, with a membrane length of 10 mm (CMA 70, CMA Microdialysis AB) in the injured hemisphere of the brain and in the noninjured hemisphere of the brain. An additional microdialysis catheter with a membrane length of 30 mm (CMA 60, CMA Microdialysis AB) was placed in the periumbilical subcutaneous adipose tissue. We studied the correlation among levels of glucose measured in peripheral blood, adipose tissue, and the noninjured hemisphere of the brain during the first 12 hours and during 3 consecutive days in neurointensive care. Results: We found a significant positive correlation between levels of glucose in peripheral blood, SC fat, and the noninjured brain during the initial 12 hours but not in injured brain. However, the result varied between the patients during the 3-day measurements. In 7 patients, there was a significant positive correlation between glucose in blood and noninjured brain, while in 4 patients this correlation was poor. In 4 patients, there was a significant positive correlation in injured brain and blood. Furthermore, there was a significant correlation between brain and adipose tissue glucose during the 3-day measurements in 11 out of 12 patients. Conclusion: This study indicates that there is a good correlation between blood glucose and adipose tissue during initial and later time points in the neurointensive care unit whereas the correlation between blood and brain seems to be more individualized among patients. This emphasizes the importance of using intracerebral microdialysis to ensure adequate intracerebral levels of glucose in patients suffering from severe traumatic brain injury and to detect hypoglycemia in the brain despite normal levels of blood glucose.
Late time behavior of the maximal slicing of the Schwarzschild black hole

A time-symmetric Cauchy slice of the extended Schwarzschild spacetime can evolve into a foliation of the $rg3m/2$ region of spacetime by maximal surfaces with the requirement that time run equally fast at both spatial ends of the manifold. This paper studies the behavior of these slices in the limit as proper time at infinity becomes arbitrarily large. It is shown that the central lapse decays exponentially and an analytic expression is given both for the exponent and for the preexponential factor.
From processing efficiency to attentional control: a mechanistic account of the anxiety–performance relationship

The aim of this paper is to outline the development of Eysenck and Calvo's (1992) processing efficiency theory (PET) and to summarise research testing its predictions in the sporting domain. PET provides a mechanistic explanation for how anxiety may influence performance through its impact on attentional resources. The central tenet of PET is that as well as pre-empting resources in working memory, increased anxiety provides a motivational function, leading to the allocation of additional effort to attempt to maintain task performance. Research in sport settings has been supportive of the predictions of PET, adopting a range of measures of processing efficiency; including self-reported effort, secondary task performance and psychophysiological indices. Furthermore, cognitive sport psychologists have recently examined direct influences of anxiety on the efficiency of information processing via gaze behaviour analyses. These findings are particularly relevant in the light of a recent update and development of PET; attentional control theory (ACT; Eysenck, Derakshan, Santos, & Calvo, 2007). ACT purports that anxiety reduces attentional control by increasing the influence of the stimulus-driven attentional system at the cost of goal directed control. It is evident that ACT may provide a useful framework for examining the relationship between anxiety, attention and performance in sport skills.
Efficacy of glucagon‐like peptide‐1 receptor agonists compared to dipeptidyl peptidase‐4 inhibitors for the management of type 2 diabetes: A meta‐analysis of randomized clinical trials

Glucagon‐like peptide‐1 (GLP‐1) agonists and dipeptidyl peptidase‐4 (DPP‐4) inhibitors are both incretin‐based therapies for type 2 diabetes (T2DM) but have distinct efficacy and side effect profiles. We thus performed a systematic review and meta‐analysis to compare the effects of GLP‐1 agonists to DPP‐4 inhibitors on glycaemic control, weight and incidence of adverse events in adults with T2DM. We also sought to determine whether there was any additional effect in switching from DPP‐4 inhibitor to GLP‐1 agonist.
Data Authentication Using Cryptography

We present a novel approach using cryptography for data authentication. The key idea is to provide a encoded quantized data projection as authentication data. This can be correctly decoded with the help of an authentic data using as side information. Cryptography source coding provides the desired robustness against legitimate variations while detecting illegitimate modification. Additional adjustments might not change the meaning of the content, but could be misclassified as tampering. Users might also be interested in localizing tampered regions. Distinguishing legitimate encodings with possible adjustments from tampering and localizing tampering are the challenges addressed in this paper. We apply cryptography source coding and statistical methods to solve the data authentication problem. Experimental results have been presented for data authentication.
Model Selection and Minimax Estimation in Generalized Linear Models

We consider model selection in generalized linear models (GLM) for high-dimensional data and propose a wide class of model selection criteria based on penalized maximum likelihood with a complexity penalty on the model size. We derive a general nonasymptotic upper bound for the Kullback-Leibler risk of the resulting estimators and establish the corresponding minimax lower bounds for the sparse GLM. For the properly chosen (nonlinear) penalty, the resulting penalized maximum likelihood estimator is shown to be asymptotically minimax and adaptive to the unknown sparsity. We also discuss possible extensions of the proposed approach to model selection in the GLM under additional structural constraints and aggregation.
Overview of molecular interactions using Biacore

Surface Plasmon Resonance (SPR) technology is a powerful tool for studying a wide range of different putative interactions. This kind of optical biosensors allow to obtain (in real time and without labelling) quantitative and qualitative information about the kinetics of the surfacebinding process. The most critical points to keep in mind when using the technique are presented, as well as practical examples of applications. Handbook of instrumental techniques from CCiTUB Overview of molecular interactions 1 BT.10
Salvage outcomes in patients with first relapse after fludarabine, cyclophosphamide, and rituximab for chronic lymphocytic leukemia: The French intergroup experience

The optimal management of patients with relapsed chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) is dictated by the type of prior therapy, duration of prior response, presence of genomic aberrations, age, and comorbidities. The patterns of relapses and the clinical outcomes of second‐line options after fludarabine‐cyclophosphamide‐rituximab (FCR) is given as a frontline treatment are currently unknown. In this retrospective and non‐randomized study, we report the outcomes of 132 patients from databases of 14 French CLL study group centers who needed a second‐line treatment after FCR frontline. Bendamustine + rituximab (BR) was the most frequently used second‐line regimen, followed by alemtuzumab‐based regimens, R‐CHOP, and FCR. Median progression‐free survival (PFS) was 18 months after BR with a median overall survival (OS) not reached. We also found that response durations of < 36 months and the presence of del(17p) are critical factors that contribute to poor overall survival. BR appears to be an effective salvage regimen in our series, both in terms of progression‐free and overall survival. Patients who relapsed less than 36 months after FCR have a poor outcome, not significantly different in this study from patients with early relapses less than 12 or 24 months. Am. J. Hematol. 90:511–514, 2015. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Macrophage Migration Inhibitory Factor for the Early Prediction of Infarct Size

Background Early diagnosis and knowledge of infarct size is critical for the management of acute myocardial infarction (MI). We evaluated whether early elevated plasma level of macrophage migration inhibitory factor (MIF) is useful for these purposes in patients with ST‐elevation MI (STEMI). Methods and Results We first studied MIF level in plasma and the myocardium in mice and determined infarct size. MI for 15 or 60 minutes resulted in 2.5‐fold increase over control values in plasma MIF levels while MIF content in the ischemic myocardium reduced by 50% and plasma MIF levels correlated with myocardium‐at‐risk and infarct size at both time‐points (P<0.01). In patients with STEMI, we obtained admission plasma samples and measured MIF, conventional troponins (TnI, TnT), high sensitive TnI (hsTnI), creatine kinase (CK), CK‐MB, and myoglobin. Infarct size was assessed by cardiac magnetic resonance (CMR) imaging. Patients with chronic stable angina and healthy volunteers were studied as controls. Of 374 STEMI patients, 68% had elevated admission MIF levels above the highest value in healthy controls (>41.6 ng/mL), a proportion similar to hsTnI (75%) and TnI (50%), but greater than other biomarkers studied (20% to 31%, all P<0.05 versus MIF). Only admission MIF levels correlated with CMR‐derived infarct size, ventricular volumes and ejection fraction (n=42, r=0.46 to 0.77, all P<0.01) at 3 day and 3 months post‐MI. Conclusion Plasma MIF levels are elevated in a high proportion of STEMI patients at the first obtainable sample and these levels are predictive of final infarct size and the extent of cardiac remodeling.
Eliciting donations to disaster victims: Psychological considerations

Predictors of monetary donations to victims of humanitarian disasters were examined. Participants (N = 219) chose between donating to different scenarios and justified their choices in an open response format. This was followed by a questionnaire. The perceived extent of the victims’ Need, the Impact of a potential donation, and the Amount donated by others all influenced donation decisions. There was a three-way interaction between these factors: The perceived Need for help only mattered if the perceived Impact of a donation was high, and the perceived Amount donated by others was small. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.