Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
CRM1 Inhibition Sensitizes Drug Resistant Human Myeloma Cells to Topoisomerase II and Proteasome Inhibitors both In Vitro and Ex Vivo

Multiple myeloma (MM) remains an incurable disease despite improved treatments, including lenalidomide/pomalidomide and bortezomib/carfilzomib based therapies and high-dose chemotherapy with autologous stem cell rescue. New drug targets are needed to further improve treatment outcomes. Nuclear export of macromolecules is misregulated in many cancers, including in hematological malignancies such as MM. CRM1 (chromosome maintenance protein-1) is a ubiquitous protein that exports large proteins (>40 kDa) from the nucleus to the cytoplasm. We found that small-molecule Selective Inhibitors of Nuclear Export (SINE) prevent CRM1-mediated export of p53 and topoisomerase IIα (topo IIα). SINE's CRM1-inhibiting activity was verified by nuclear-cytoplasmic fractionation and immunocytochemical staining of the CRM1 cargoes p53 and topo IIα in MM cells. We found that SINE molecules reduced cell viability and induced apoptosis when used as both single agents in the sub-micromolar range and when combined with doxorubicin, bortezomib, or carfilzomib but not lenalidomide, melphalan, or dexamethasone. In addition, CRM1 inhibition sensitized MM cell lines and patient myeloma cells to doxorubicin, bortezomib, and carfilzomib but did not affect peripheral blood mononuclear or non-myeloma bone marrow mononuclear cells as shown by cell viability and apoptosis assay. Drug resistance induced by co-culture of myeloma cells with bone marrow stroma cells was circumvented by the addition of SINE molecules. These results support the continued development of SINE for patients with MM.
Use of multicoil arrays for separation of signal from multiple slices simultaneously excited

Increased acquisition efficiency has been achieved by exciting several slices simultaneously. The mixed data were unfolded to produce separate slices using the spatial encoding information inherent in a multicoil receiver system. Each coil yields a linear combination of signals from all excited slices weighted by the sensitivity of each coil. A matrix inversion provides a solution to unfold these images. J. Magn. Reson. Imaging 2001;13:313–317. © 2001 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Sting: A TCP-based Network Measurement Tool

Understanding wide-area network characteristics is critical for evaluating the performance of Internet applications. Unfortunately, measuring the end-to-end network behavior between two hosts can be problematic. Traditional ICMP-based tools, such as ping, are easy to use and work universally, but produce results that are limited and inaccurate. Measurement infrastructures, such as NIMI, can produce highly detailed and accurate results, but require specialized software to be deployed at both the sender and the receiver. In this paper we explore using the TCP protocol to provide more accurate network measurements than traditional tools, while still preserving their near-universal applicability. Our first prototype, a tool called sting, is able to accurately measure the packet loss rate on both the forward and reverse paths between a pair of hosts. We describe the techniques used to accomplish this, how they were validated, and present our preliminary experience measuring the packet loss rates to and from a variety of Web servers.
Software documentation: how much is enough?

It is a well-known fact that software documentation is, in practice, poor and incomplete. Though specification, design, and test documents-among other things-are required by standards and capability maturity models (e.g., SEI CMM), such documentation does not exist in a complete and consistent form in most organizations. When documents are produced, they tend to follow no defined standard and lack information that is crucial to make them understandable and usable by developers and maintainers. Then a fundamental practical question, which motivated this keynote address, is to better understand what type of documentation is required, what is needed to support its completeness and consistency, and what is the level of precision required for each type of document. These questions cannot be investigated at that level of generality though. Answers are likely to be very context-dependent if they are to be precise. We focus our attention here on object-oriented development and the Unified Modeling Language (UML).
Architectural Stability Evolution in Open-Source Systems

Open-source software systems are becoming progressively vital these days. Since open-source softwares are usually developed in a different management style, the quality of their architectures needs to be studied. ISO/IEC SQuaRe quality standard characterized stability as one of the sub-characteristics of maintainability. Unstable software architecture could cause the software to require high maintenance cost and effort. Almost all stability related studies target the package level. To our knowledge, there has been no proposed work in literature that addresses the stability at the system architecture level. In this work, we propose a simple, yet efficient, technique that is based on carefully aggregating the package level stability in order to measure the change in the architecture level stability as the architecture evolution happens. The proposed method can be used to further study the cause behind the positive or negative architecture stability changes.
Randomized algorithm for Information Retrieval using past search results

In Information Retrieval, past searches are a source of useful information for new searches. This paper presents an approach for reusing past queries submitted to an information retrieval system and their returned results to build the result list for a new submitted query. This approach is based on a Monte Carlo algorithm to select past search results to answer the new query. The proposed algorithm is easy to implement and does not require learning. First experiments were carried out to evaluate the proposed algorithm. These experiments used a simulated dataset (i.e., document collections, queries and judgments of users are simulated). The proposed approach was compared with a traditional approach of information retrieval, showing better precision for our proposed approach.
Exploring infrastructure support for app-based services on cloud platforms 1

Major infrastructure-as-a-cloud (IaaS) providers have recently been building marketplaces of “cloud apps,” which are VMs pre-installed with a variety of software stacks. Clients of cloud computing leverage such markets by downloading and instantiating the apps that best suit their computing needs, thereby saving the effort needed to configure and build
Simultaneous tracking and recognition of human faces from video

The paper investigates the interaction between tracking and recognition of human faces from video under a framework proposed earlier (Shaohua Zhou et al., Proc. 5th Int. Conf. on Face and Gesture Recog., 2002; Shaohua Zhou and Chellappa, R., Proc. European Conf. on Computer Vision, 2002), where a time series model is used to resolve the uncertainties in both tracking and recognition. However, our earlier efforts employed only a simple likelihood measurement in the form of a Laplacian density to deal with appearance changes between frames and between the observation and gallery images, yielding poor accuracies in both tracking and recognition when confronted by pose and illumination variations. The interaction between tracking and recognition was not well understood. We address the interdependence between tracking and recognition using a series of experiments and quantify the interacting nature of tracking and recognition.
Semantic Lexicon Induction from Twitter with Pattern Relatedness and Flexible Term Length

With the rise of social media, learning from informal text has become increasingly important. We present a novel semantic lexicon induction approach that is able to learn new vocabulary from social media. Our method is robust to the idiosyncrasies of informal and open-domain text corpora. Unlike previous work, it does not impose restrictions on the lexical features of candidate terms — e.g. by restricting entries to nouns or noun phrases —while still being able to accurately learn multiword phrases of variable length. Starting with a few seed terms for a semantic category, our method first explores the context around seed terms in a corpus, and identifies context patterns that are relevant to the category. These patterns are used to extract candidate terms — i.e. multiword segments that are further analyzed to ensure meaningful term boundary segmentation. We show that our approach is able to learn high quality semantic lexicons from informally written social media text of Twitter, and can achieve accuracy as high as 92% in the top 100 learned category members.
Consistent Paternity Skew through Ontogeny in Peron's Tree Frog (Litoria peronii)

Background A large number of studies in postcopulatory sexual selection use paternity success as a proxy for fertilization success. However, selective mortality during embryonic development can lead to skews in paternity in situations of polyandry and sperm competition. Thus, when assessment of paternity fails to incorporate mortality skews during early ontogeny, this may interfere with correct interpretation of results and subsequent evolutionary inference. In a previous series of in vitro sperm competition experiments with amphibians (Litoria peronii), we showed skewed paternity patterns towards males more genetically similar to the female. Methodology/Principal Findings Here we use in vitro fertilizations and sperm competition trials to test if this pattern of paternity of fully developed tadpoles reflects patterns of paternity at fertilization and if paternity skews changes during embryonic development. We show that there is no selective mortality through ontogeny and that patterns of paternity of hatched tadpoles reflects success of competing males in sperm competition at fertilization. Conclusions/Significance While this study shows that previous inferences of fertilization success from paternity data are valid for this species, rigorous testing of these assumptions is required to ensure that differential embryonic mortality does not confound estimations of true fertilization success.
Frontiers in Synaptic Neuroscience Synaptic Neuroscience

neuronal populations are capable of carrying, and by what principles. In this way, models and assumptions can be ruled out or reinforced in parallel with the collection of new data sets. Information theory has proved to be a profitable way to evaluate the salient differences between the neural representations of sensory events and the potential mechanisms by which neurons convey signals about stimuli. In rat whisker cortex, information theoretic studies have highlighted the potentially important role of spike times in encoding sensory information: the knowledge of the timing of spikes with millisecond precision adds large amounts of information that cannot be gained by counting the spikes over tens or hundreds of millisecond (Panzeri et al., 2001; Petersen et al., 2001; Arabzadeh et al., 2006). When stimuli are presented to anes-thetized animals, the experimenter, of course, knows the stimulus timing. As a result, most spike timing based codes that have been proposed rely on stimulus time knowledge. For example, in rat whisker cortex the short latency of neural responses carries almost all the information that neurons transmit about stimulus location, yet the latency is calculated with respect to a known stimulus onset time (Panzeri et al., 2001, 2003b; Petersen et al., 2001, 2002a,b). Latency codes are the simplest and most prominent case of information encoding by spike times measured with an external temporal reference, and they offer a number of significant computational
Optimizing user association and frequency reuse for heterogeneous network under stochastic model

This paper considers the joint optimization of frequency reuse and base-station (BS) bias for user association in downlink heterogeneous networks for load balancing and intercell interference management. To make the analysis tractable, we assume that BSs are randomly deployed as point processes in multiple tiers, where BSs in each tier have different transmission powers and spatial densities. A utility maximization framework is formulated based on the user coverage rate, which is a function of the different BS biases for user association and different frequency reuse factors across BS tiers. Compared to previous works where the bias levels are heuristically determined and full reuse is adopted, we quantitatively compute the optimal user association bias and obtain the closed-form solution of the optimal frequency reuse. Interestingly, we find that the optimal bias and the optimal reuse factor of each BS tier have an inversely proportional relationship. Further, we also propose an iterative method for optimizing these two factors. In contrast to system-level optimization solutions based on specific channel realization and network topology, our approach is off-line and is useful for deriving deployment insights. Numerical results show that optimizing user association and frequency reuse for multi-tier heterogeneous networks can effectively improve cell-edge user rate performance and utility.
Clinical outcomes of vertical bone augmentation to enable dental implant placement: a systematic review.

BACKGROUND This review addressed the focused question of what is the predictability of vertical ridge augmentation techniques for patients, who were diagnosed with insufficient alveolar bone volume for the placement of dental implants. MATERIAL AND METHODS A systematic online review of three main databases was performed between 1966 and 1 November 2007. Four groups of vertical bone augmentation techniques have been identified and evaluated: (1) guided bone regeneration, (2) distraction osteogenesis, (3) onlay bone grafting, and (4) an array of different techniques. Data extraction was based on the following outcomes: (a) success and failure rate of the procedure (vertical bone gain/loss), (b) complication rate of the procedure, and (c) implant survival, success and failure rate. RESULTS The initial search identified 189 papers from the electronic database. The review produced seven papers for GBR, 13 reporting distraction osteogenesis, five for onlay bone grafting and three describing different techniques. CONCLUSIONS For the concept of vertical ridge augmentation to enable dental implant placement, there are clinical and histological data supporting its potential use. Given the confined number of investigators using these techniques and the low number of patient treatments reported in the literature, the generalizability of this approach is limited at this time.
Rural Windfall or a New Resource Curse? Coca, Income, and Civil Conflict in Colombia

We study the consequences of an exogenous upsurge in coca prices and cultivation in Colombia, where most coca leaf is now harvested. This shift generated only modest economic gains in rural areas, primarily in the form of increased self-employment earnings and increased labor supply by teenage boys. The rural areas that saw accelerated coca production subsequently became considerably more violent, while urban areas were affected little. These findings are consistent with the view that the Colombian civil conflict is fueled by the financial opportunities that coca provides and that rent-seeking by combatants limits the economic gains from coca.
Image segmentation optimisation for X-ray images of airline luggage

Airline luggage contains a wide variety of objects and their automated image analysis require good quality image segmentation. Given the fact that such images are highly cluttered, it is non trivial task to optimise image segmentation algorithms. In this paper we present a methodology for optimising image segmentation algorithms based on image properties without manual intervention. The methodology computes image properties such as average edge gradient strength, inter- vs. intra-cluster distances using image colour features, and colour purity of resultant regions, to train a neural network that maps these to ground-truth labelling on the acceptability (good or bad) of the solution (resultant segmentation). We show that on unseen test data, this methodology performs extremely well by correctly predicting the optimal parameters of image segmentation algorithms used.
Robust Control of Jump Parameter Systems Governed by Uncertain Chains

We consider an infinite-horizon minimax optimal control problem for nonlinear stochastic uncertain systems governed by a discrete-state continuous-time chain. The chain and system dynamics are subject to uncertain disturbances. Using the large deviations theory we construct a robust stabilizing suboptimal guaranteed-performance controller. Conditions are presented under which this controller is optimal. We then present a numeric algorithm for calculating a robust (sub)optimal controller using a Markov chain approximation technique.
2-7-2014 Stretching Stretch

We give a generalized definition of stretch that simplifies the efficient construction of lowstretch embeddings suitable for graph algorithms. The generalization, based on discounting highly stretched edges by taking their pth power for some 0 < p < 1, is directly related to performances of existing algorithms. This discounting of high-stretch edges allows us to treat many classes of edges with coarser granularity. It leads to a two-pass approach that combines bottom-up clustering and top-down decompositions to construct these embeddings in O(m log log n) time. Our algorithm parallelizes readily and can also produce generalizations of low-stretch subgraphs.
Temporal Analysis of Meiotic DNA Double-Strand Break Formation and Repair in Drosophila Females

Using an antibody against the phosphorylated form of His2Av (γ-His2Av), we have described the time course for the series of events leading from the formation of a double-strand break (DSB) to a crossover in Drosophila female meiotic prophase. MEI-P22 is required for DSB formation and localizes to chromosomes prior to γ-His2Av foci. Drosophila females, however, are among the group of organisms where synaptonemal complex (SC) formation is not dependent on DSBs. In the absence of two SC proteins, C(3)G and C(2)M, the number of DSBs in oocytes is significantly reduced. This is consistent with the appearance of SC protein staining prior to γ-His2Av foci. However, SC formation is incomplete or absent in the neighboring nurse cells, and γ-His2Av foci appear with the same kinetics as in oocytes and do not depend on SC proteins. Thus, competence for DSB formation in nurse cells occurs with a specific timing that is independent of the SC, whereas in the oocytes, some SC proteins may have a regulatory role to counteract the effects of a negative regulator of DSB formation. The SC is not sufficient for DSB formation, however, since DSBs were absent from the heterochromatin even though SC formation occurs in these regions. All γ-His2Av foci disappear before the end of prophase, presumably as repair is completed and crossovers are formed. However, oocytes in early prophase exhibit a slower response to X-ray–induced DSBs compared to those in the late pachytene stage. Assuming all DSBs appear as γ-His2Av foci, there is at least a 3:1 ratio of noncrossover to crossover products. From a comparison of the frequency of γ-His2Av foci and crossovers, it appears that Drosophila females have only a weak mechanism to ensure a crossover in the presence of a low number of DSBs.
Sentence repetition in adolescents with specific language impairments and autism: an investigation of complex syntax.

BACKGROUND Recent studies have indicated that many children with autism spectrum disorders present with language difficulties that are similar to those of children with specific language impairments, leading some to argue for similar structural deficits in these two disorders. AIMS Repetition of sentences involving long-distance dependencies was used to investigate complex syntax in these groups. METHODS & PROCEDURES Adolescents with specific language impairments (mean age = 15;3, n = 14) and autism spectrum disorders plus language impairment (autism plus language impairment; mean age = 14;8, n = 16) were recruited alongside typically developing adolescents (mean age = 14;4, n = 17). They were required to repeat sentences containing relative clauses that varied in syntactic complexity. OUTCOMES & RESULTS The adolescents with specific language impairments presented with greater syntactic difficulties than the adolescents with autism plus language impairment, as manifested by higher error rates on the more complex object relative clauses, and a greater tendency to make syntactic changes during repetition. CONCLUSIONS & IMPLICATIONS Adolescents with specific language impairments may have more severe syntactic difficulties than adolescents with autism plus language impairment, possibly due to their short-term memory limitations.
Well-being at workplace through mindfulness: Influence of Yoga practice on positive affect and aggression

Introduction: Mindfulness is about being aware of internal and external stimuli by witnessing the act in a nonjudgmental manner. Earlier researches suggest that positive affectivity (PA) is negatively related to negative affectivity, aggression, and counterproductive work behavior (CWB). Aim: The present study examined the effect of mindfulness developed through Yoga practices on aggression and PA among working professionals involved in CWB. Materials and Methods: A pre-test, post-test randomized controlled design was used with a study sample of Yoga group (n = 80) and control group (n = 80) for a duration of 10 weeks. Yoga module that included Asanas, Pranayama, meditation, and Yogic theories were taught to the Yoga group. Mild to moderate physical exercises and management theories were taught to the control group. Measurements of aggression and PA scores were taken at the baseline and postintervention for assessment. Results: At the baseline, there was no significant difference in the variable scores between both the groups. Postintervention results revealed that Yoga group showed statistically significant (P < 0.001) reduction in aggression and significant (P < 0.001) enhancement in PA in comparison to the control group. Conclusions: When compared with the control group at the end of the intervention, the Yoga group scores were significantly lower for aggression and higher for PA.