Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Cep169, a Novel Microtubule Plus-End-Tracking Centrosomal Protein, Binds to CDK5RAP2 and Regulates Microtubule Stability

The centrosomal protein, CDK5RAP2, is a microcephaly protein that regulates centrosomal maturation by recruitment of a γ-tubulin ring complex (γ-TuRC) onto centrosomes. In this report, we identified a novel human centrosomal protein, Cep169, as a binding partner of CDK5RAP2, a member of microtubule plus-end-tracking proteins (+TIPs). Cep169 interacts directly with CDK5RAP2 through CM1, an evolutionarily conserved domain, and colocalizes at the pericentriolar matrix (PCM) around centrioles with CDK5RAP2. In addition, Cep169 interacts with EB1 through SxIP-motif responsible for EB1 binding, and colocalizes with CDK5RAP2 at the microtubule plus-end. EB1-binding–deficient Cep169 abolishes EB1 interaction and microtubule plus-end attachment, indicating Cep169 as a novel member of +TIPs. We further show that ectopic expression of either Cep169 or CDK5RAP2 induces microtubule bundling and acetylation in U2OS cells, and depletion of Cep169 induces microtubule depolymerization in HeLa cells, although Cep169 is not required for assembly of γ-tubulin onto centrosome by CDK5RAP2. These results show that Cep169 targets microtubule tips and regulates stability of microtubules with CDK5RAP2.
Inequalities in survival from colorectal cancer: a comparison of the impact of deprivation, treatment, and host factors on observed and cause specific survival

Objective: To investigate whether socioeconomic deprivation is associated with cause specific and all cause survival for colorectal cancer and to what extent this is independent of significant prognostic factors. Design: Prospective cohort. Setting: The former Wessex Health Region, South West England. Participants: All patients resident in Wessex registered with a diagnosis of colorectal cancer over three years (n=5176). Survival analysis was carried out on those patients with compete data for all factors and a positive survival time (n=4419). Outcomes: Death from colorectal cancer and all cause over five year follow up from initial diagnosis. Main results: Deprivation was significantly associated with survival for both outcomes in univariate analysis; the unadjusted hazard ratio for dying from colorectal cancer (most deprived compared with most affluent) was 1.12 (95% CI 1.00 to 1.25) and for all cause was 1.18 (1.07 to 1.30). Significant prognostic factors for both outcomes were age, specialisation of surgeon, Dukes’s stage, and emergency compared with elective surgery. Comorbidity and gender were only associated with all cause survival. After adjustment for prognostic factors, the effect of deprivation on both cause specific and all cause mortality was reduced, and it was non-significant for colorectal cancer. However, the most deprived group had consistently worse survival than the most affluent. Conclusions: Factors associated with survival with colorectal cancer depend on the outcome measure. Socioeconomic deprivation is adversely associated with survival in patients with colorectal cancer. This is strongest for non-colorectal cancer death, partly reflecting higher comorbidity, but it is there for colorectal cancer though not statistically significant. Conclusive evidence of the inequalities by socioeconomic status and underlying reasons needs to come from studies using individual based measures of socioeconomic status and more detail on treatment and host related factors.
New thermosensitive plasmid for gram-positive bacteria

We isolated a replication-thermosensitive mutant of the broad-host-range replicon pWV01. The mutant pVE6002 is fully thermosensitive above 35 degrees C in both gram-negative and gram-positive bacteria. Four clustered mutations were identified in the gene encoding the replication protein of pVE6002. The thermosensitive derivative of the related plasmid pE194 carries a mutation in the analogous region but not in the same position. Derivatives of the thermosensitive plasmid convenient for cloning purposes have been constructed. The low shut-off temperature of pVE6002 makes it a useful suicide vector for bacteria which are limited in their own temperature growth range. Using pVE6002 as the delivery vector for a transposon Tn10 derivative in Bacillus subtilis, we observed transposition frequencies of about 1%.
Adaptive Multiresolution Computations Applied to Detonations

Abstract A space-time adaptive method is presented for the reactive Euler equations describing chemically reacting gas flow where a two species model is used for the chemistry. The governing equations are discretized with a finite volume method and dynamic space adaptivity is introduced using multiresolution analysis. A time splitting method of Strang is applied to be able to consider stiff problems while keeping the method explicit. For time adaptivity an improved Runge–Kutta–Fehlberg scheme is used. Applications deal with detonation problems in one and two space dimensions. A comparison of the adaptive scheme with reference computations on a regular grid allows to assess the accuracy and the computational efficiency, in terms of CPU time and memory requirements.
Novel view generation from multiple omni-directional videos

Recently, generation of novel views from images acquired by multiple cameras has been investigated in the fields of virtual and mixed reality. Most conventional methods need some assumptions about the scene such as a static scene and limited positions of objects. In this paper, we propose a new method for generating novel view images of a dynamic scene with a wide view, which does not depend on the scene. The images acquired from omni-directional cameras are first divided into static regions and dynamic regions. The novel view images are then generated by applying a morphing technique to static regions and by computing visual hulls for dynamic regions in realtime. In experiments, we show that a prototype system can generate novel view images in real-time from live video streams.
Targeted Gene Delivery to Vascular Tissue In Vivo by Tropism-Modified Adeno-Associated Virus Vectors

Background—Gene therapy offers an unprecedented opportunity to treat diverse pathologies. Adeno-associated virus (AAV) is a promising gene delivery vector for cardiovascular disease. However, AAV transduces the liver after systemic administration, reducing its usefulness for therapies targeted at other sites. Because vascular endothelial cells (ECs) are in contact with the bloodstream and are heterogeneous between organs, they represent an ideal target for site-specific delivery of biological agents. Methods and Results—We isolated human venous EC-targeting peptides by phage display and genetically incorporated them into AAV capsids after amino acid 587. Peptide-modified AAVs transduced venous (but not arterial) ECs in vitro, whereas hepatocyte transduction was significantly lower than with native AAV. Intravenous infusion of engineered AAVs into mice produced reduced vector accumulation in liver measured 1 hour and 28 days after injection and delayed blood clearance rates compared with native AAV. Peptide-modified AAVs produced enhanced uptake of virions in the vena cava with selective transgene expression. Retargeting was dose dependent, and coinfusion of either heparin or free competing peptides indicated that uptake was principally independent of native AAV tropism and mediated via the peptide. Conclusions—AAV tropism can be genetically engineered by use of phage display–derived peptides to generate vectors that are selective for the vasculature.
A survey of autonomic computing—degrees, models, and applications

Autonomic Computing is a concept that brings together many fields of computing with the purpose of creating computing systems that self-manage. In its early days it was criticised as being a “hype topic” or a rebadging of some Multi Agent Systems work. In this survey, we hope to show that this was not indeed ‘hype’ and that, though it draws on much work already carried out by the Computer Science and Control communities, its innovation is strong and lies in its robust application to the specific self-management of computing systems. To this end, we first provide an introduction to the motivation and concepts of autonomic computing and describe some research that has been seen as seminal in influencing a large proportion of early work. Taking the components of an established reference model in turn, we discuss the works that have provided significant contributions to that area. We then look at larger scaled systems that compose autonomic systems illustrating the hierarchical nature of their architectures. Autonomicity is not a well defined subject and as such different systems adhere to different degrees of Autonomicity, therefore we cross-slice the body of work in terms of these degrees. From this we list the key applications of autonomic computing and discuss the research work that is missing and what we believe the community should be considering.
Psychopathologische und komorbide Störungen inhaftierter Jugendlicher in Österreich

Fragestellung: Inhaftierte Jugendliche zeigen hohe Pravalenzraten an psychiatrischen Storungen und gehauft psychiatrische Komorbiditat. Im Strafvollzug tatige Kinder- und JugendpsychiaterInnen stehen vor der Versorgungsaufgabe und der Notwendigkeit, storungsspezifische Behandlungsansatze auszuarbeiten. Die in dieser Studie erhobenen psychiatrischen Storungen bei inhaftierten Jugendlichen wurden im Hinblick auf storungsspezifische Behandlungsaspekte geschlechtsspezifisch ausgewertet. Methodik: Das Mini International Neuropsychiatric Interview fur Kinder und Jugendliche wurde angewandt, um die Psychopathologie bei in Osterreich inhaftierten Jugendlichen zu erheben. Die endgultige Stichprobe umfasste 333 Jugendliche (58 Madchen und 275 Jungen). Ergebnisse: 90 % der inhaftierten Jugendlichen litten an mindestens einer psychiatrischen Storung, uber 60 % zeigten zwei oder mehr koexistierende Storungsbilder. Mittels Faktorenanalyse wurden fur mannliche Jugendliche drei klinisch relevante Storungsmuster anhand vo.
Angioimmunoblastic Lymphadenopathy: A Case Report with Subsequent Evolution into a Lymphoplasmacytic-Lymphoplasmacytoid Malignant Lymphoma

A case of angioimmunoblastic lymphadenopathy with transformation into a lymphoplasmacytoid malignant lymphoma is reported. The immunoperoridase method showed the polyclonality of the cells of the angioimmunoblastic lymphadenopathy and the monoclonality of the cell population of the malignant lymphoma.
A Puzzle Unsolved: Failure to Observe Different Effects of God and Religion Primes on Intergroup Attitudes

Religious priming has been found to have both positive and negative consequences, and recent research suggests that the activation of God-related and community-related religious cognitions may cause outgroup prosociality and outgroup derogation respectively. The present research sought to examine whether reminders of God and religion have different effects on attitudes towards ingroup and outgroup members. Over two studies, little evidence was found for different effects of these two types of religious primes. In study 1, individuals primed with the words “religion”, “God” and a neutral control word evaluated both ingroup and outgroup members similarly, although a marginal tendency towards more negative evaluations of outgroup members by females exposed to religion primes was observed. In study 2, no significant differences in attitudes towards an outgroup member were observed between the God, religion, and neutral priming conditions. Furthermore, the gender effect observed in study 1 did not replicate in this second study. Possible explanations for these null effects are discussed.
Transformation-Tolerant Object Recognition in Rats Revealed by Visual Priming

Successful use of rodents as models for studying object vision crucially depends on the ability of their visual system to construct representations of visual objects that tolerate (i.e., remain relatively unchanged with respect to) the tremendous changes in object appearance produced, for instance, by size and viewpoint variation. Whether this is the case is still controversial, despite some recent demonstration of transformation-tolerant object recognition in rats. In fact, it remains unknown to what extent such a tolerant recognition has a spontaneous, perceptual basis, or, alternatively, mainly reflects learning of arbitrary associative relations among trained object appearances. In this study, we addressed this question by training rats to categorize a continuum of morph objects resulting from blending two object prototypes. The resulting psychometric curve (reporting the proportion of responses to one prototype along the morph line) served as a reference when, in a second phase of the experiment, either prototype was briefly presented as a prime, immediately before a test morph object. The resulting shift of the psychometric curve showed that recognition became biased toward the identity of the prime. Critically, this bias was observed also when the primes were transformed along a variety of dimensions (i.e., size, position, viewpoint, and their combination) that the animals had never experienced before. These results indicate that rats spontaneously perceive different views/appearances of an object as similar (i.e., as instances of the same object) and argue for the existence of neuronal substrates underlying formation of transformation-tolerant object representations in rats.
Quality of American English front vowels before /r/

The vowels /i/ and /I/ are not contrastive before /r/ in American English, and the phonetics literature is equivocal about which symbol to use for the nucleus in words such as beer. Similarly /e/ and /ε/ are not contrastive before /r/, and the literature contains varied references to one or the other in words such as bear. The purpose of this study was to investigate these vowels by acoustic measurements, discriminant analyses, and listening tests. Eleven men and ten women residing in southern Michigan recorded /r/-final monosyllables (beer, bear, hear, hair), as well as words containing /i, I e, ε with other finals, such as beet, bit, bait, bet. Acoustic measurements included the first three formants at steady state. The high front vowel in /r/-final syllables (beer, hear) showed formant values intermediate between /i/ and /I/, but closer to /i/, and the mid front vowel (in bear and hair) was intermediate between /e/ and /ε/, but closer to /e/. Discriminant analysis using the first three formants and listening tests using 60 ms vowel excerpts yielded results consistent with the idea that the pre-/r/ vowels are acoustically intermediate between their tense and lax neighbors but resemble /i/ and /e/ more closely than /I/ and /ε/.
"Cut me some slack": latency-aware live migration for databases

Cloud-based data management platforms often employ multitenant databases, where service providers achieve economies of scale by consolidating multiple tenants on shared servers. In such database systems, a key functionality for service providers is database migration, which is useful for dynamic provisioning, load balancing, and system maintenance. Practical migration solutions have several requirements, including high availability, low performance overhead, and self-management. We present Slacker, an end-to-end database migration system at the middleware level satisfying these requirements. Slacker leverages off-the-shelf hot backup tools to achieve live migration with effectively zero down-time. Additionally, Slacker minimizes the performance impact of migrations on both the migrating tenant and collocated tenants by leveraging 'migration slack', or resources that can be used for migration without excessively impacting query latency. We apply a PID controller to this problem, allowing Slacker to automatically detect and exploit migration slack in real time. Using our prototype, we demonstrate that Slacker effectively controls interference during migrations, maintaining latency within 10% of a given latency target, while still performing migrations rapidly and efficiently.
‘Emboldened bodies’: social class, school health policy and obesity discourse

This paper examines the multiple ways in which health policy relating to obesity, diet and exercise is recontextualised and mediated by teachers and pupils in the context of social class in the UK. Drawing on a case study of a middle-class primary school in central England, the paper documents the complexity of the policy process, its uncertainty, its intended and unintended affects and effects on the lives and bodies of young people as they negotiate ‘health’ across a range of social contexts. Particular attention is paid to the voices of young people, whom by way of embodying imperatives found in health discourses become ‘troubled bodies’, ‘emboldened bodies’, or ‘insouciant bodies’, as such imperatives intersect with pupils' various subjectivities. It is argued that whilst all pupils appear to be affected by health policy, they are differently effected by it. The paper will outline how pupils were effected by health policy in emboldened and privileged ways and how the young people seem to not only rema.
Murine Monoclonal Antibodies Specific for Lipopolysaccharide of Escherichia coli O26 and O111

ABSTRACT Monoclonal antibody (MAb) 12F5 reacted with 35 Escherichia coli O26 isolates and cross-reacted with 1 of 365 non-E. coli O26 isolates. MAb 15C4 reacted with 30 E. coliO111 strains and 8 Salmonella O35 strains (possessing identical O antigen) but not with 362 other bacterial strains. Lipopolysaccharide immunoblots confirmed MAb O-antigen specificity.
A general formal framework for multi-agent meeting problems

The multi-agent meeting (MAM) problem asks for a meeting location for multiple heterogeneous agents such that the agents can get together within a given time or budget, possibly using different modes of transportation, subject to some constraints and preferences to visit specific locations on their ways to the meeting location. We mathematically model MAM as a graph problem, prove its intractability, and introduce a novel formal method to solve it and its variations using logic-based AI methods. We experimentally evaluate our approach with artificial benchmarks randomly generated over a grid, and show its real world applicability with instances generated over maps of Istanbul and Hong Kong.
Audio Clips Content Comparison Using Latent Semantic Indexing

This paper describes experiments for audio clips comparison based on spoken context. The spoken content is obtained using automatic speech recognition. The social tags that are available for most of the audio clips are used as keywords. These keywords are mapped to the spoken transcription representing the audio clips on the base of the social tags-keywords. The clips are described using the term frequency-inverse document frequency weighting. This description statistically evaluates how important are the keywords for the documents. The Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) is applied on audio clips-feature vectors matrix mapping the clips content into low dimensional latent semantic space. The clips are compared using document-document comparison measure based in LSI. The similarity based on LSI is compared with the results obtained by using the standard vector space model.
Reducing the Socio-Economic Status Achievement Gap at University by Promoting Mastery-Oriented Assessment

In spite of official intentions to reduce inequalities at University, students’ socio-economic status (SES) is still a major determinant of academic success. The literature on the dual function of University suggests that University serves not only an educational function (i.e., to improve students’ learning), but also a selection function (i.e., to compare people, and orient them towards different positions in society). Because current assessment practices focus on the selection more than on the educational function, their characteristics fit better with norms and values shared by dominant high-status groups and may favour high-SES students over low-SES students in terms of performances. A focus on the educational function (i.e., mastery goals), instead, may support low-SES students’ achievement, but empirical evidence is currently lacking. The present research set out to provide such evidence and tested, in two field studies and a randomised field experiment, the hypothesis that focusing on University’s educational function rather than on its selection function may reduce the SES achievement gap. Results showed that a focus on learning, mastery-oriented goals in the assessment process reduced the SES achievement gap at University. For the first time, empirical data support the idea that low-SES students can perform as well as high-SES students if they are led to understand assessment as part of the learning process, a way to reach mastery goals, rather than as a way to compare students to each other and select the best of them, resulting in performance goals. This research thus provides a theoretical framework to understand the differential effects of assessment on the achievement of high and low-SES students, and paves the way toward the implementation of novel, theory-driven interventions to reduce the SES-based achievement gap at University.
American Sign Language fingerspelling recognition from video: Methods for unrestricted recognition and signer-independence

In this thesis, we study the problem of recognizing video sequences of fingerspelled letters in American Sign Language (ASL). Fingerspelling comprises a significant but relatively understudied part of ASL, and recognizing it is challenging for a number of reasons: It involves quick, small motions that are often highly coarticulated; it exhibits significant variation between signers; and there has been a dearth of continuous fingerspelling data collected. In this work, we propose several types of recognition approaches, and explore the signer variation problem. Our best-performing models are segmental (semi-Markov) conditional random fields using deep neural network-based features. In the signer-dependent setting, our recognizers achieve up to about 8% letter error rates. The signer-independent setting is much more challenging, but with neural network adaptation we achieve up to 17% letter error rates.
Intelligent dispatch of Electric Vehicles performing vehicle-to-grid regulation

Electric vehicles (EVs) have the potential to provide valuable services to the utility grid through vehicle-to-grid (V2G). In order to take full advantage of V2G services aggregators are required to schedule and dispatch large groups of EVs in accordance to market rules. While there has been many studies looking at aggregator scheduling algorithms, there has been little work on algorithms for the actual dispatch. A commonly assumed method of incremental dispatch faces challenges of more expensive charging station costs and high communications overhead. In this work a dispatch algorithm for EVs performing unidirectional regulation is developed. This algorithm switches EV charging stations on and off using remote switches to meet the system regulation signal. The decisions on which EV to switch is made using charging priorities. This dispatch algorithm allows for less expensive infrastructure and a significant reduction in the required communications signals. Simulations on a group of 1000 EVs in the ERCOT system over a 24 hour period verify the performance of this dispatch algorithm against incremental dispatch algorithms.