Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Eicosanoid Release Is Increased by Membrane Destabilization and CFTR Inhibition in Calu-3 Cells

The antiinflammatory protein annexin-1 (ANXA1) and the adaptor S100A10 (p11), inhibit cytosolic phospholipase A2 (cPLA2α) by direct interaction. Since the latter is responsible for the cleavage of arachidonic acid at membrane phospholipids, all three proteins modulate eicosanoid production. We have previously shown the association of ANXA1 expression with that of CFTR, the multifactorial protein mutated in cystic fibrosis. This could in part account for the abnormal inflammatory status characteristic of this disease. We postulated that CFTR participates in the regulation of eicosanoid release by direct interaction with a complex containing ANXA1, p11 and cPLA2α. We first analyzed by plasmon surface resonance the in vitro binding of CFTR to the three proteins. A significant interaction between p11 and the NBD1 domain of CFTR was found. We observed in Calu-3 cells a rapid and partial redistribution of all four proteins in detergent resistant membranes (DRM) induced by TNF-α. This was concomitant with increased IL-8 synthesis and cPLA2α activation, ultimately resulting in eicosanoid (PGE2 and LTB4) overproduction. DRM destabilizing agent methyl-β-cyclodextrin induced further cPLA2α activation and eicosanoid release, but inhibited IL-8 synthesis. We tested in parallel the effect of short exposure of cells to CFTR inhibitors Inh172 and Gly-101. Both inhibitors induced a rapid increase in eicosanoid production. Longer exposure to Inh172 did not increase further eicosanoid release, but inhibited TNF-α-induced relocalization to DRM. These results show that (i) CFTR may form a complex with cPLA2α and ANXA1 via interaction with p11, (ii) CFTR inhibition and DRM disruption induce eicosanoid synthesis, and (iii) suggest that the putative cPLA2/ANXA1/p11/CFTR complex may participate in the modulation of the TNF-α-induced production of eicosanoids, pointing to the importance of membrane composition and CFTR function in the regulation of inflammation mediator synthesis.
An effective video copy detection method

This paper introduces a new video copy detection method base on the combination of video Y and U spatiotemporal feature curves and key frames. In this new method, the feature curves are extracted from the video, and then two videos' feature curves are compared to determine whether they have the same content or not. In the comparing process, Grads comparison method and Exception Factor are used. To improve retrieval precision for videos like films, a method based on clips and key frames is added after spatio-temporal feature curves based retrieval. The new algorithm can largely reduce the data amount of video copy detection. Experimental results show the effectiveness and robustness of the method.
A Research Study of the Association between Maternal Microchimerism and Systemic Lupus Erythematosus in Adults: A Comparison between Patients and Healthy Controls Based on Single-Nucleotide Polymorphism Using Quantitative Real-Time PCR

Background Naturally acquired microchimerism may arise in the mother and her child during pregnancy when bidirectional trafficking of cells occurs through the placental barrier. The occurrence of maternal microchimerism (maternal cells in the offspring) has been associated with several autoimmune diseases, especially in children. Systemic Lupus erythematosus (SLE) is an autoimmune disorder with a resemblance to graft-versus-host disease. The aim of this study was to investigate the association between maternal microchimerism in the blood and SLE. Methodology/Principal Findings Thirty-two patients with SLE, 17 healthy brothers of the patients, and an additional 12 unrelated healthy men were the subjects in this study. A single-nucleotide polymorphism unique to each mother was identified, and maternal microchimerism in the study group and in the control group was detected using a quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction technique. No differences in the frequency or the concentration of maternal cells were apparent in the blood of patients with SLE or in that of the controls. Two patients and one control tested positive for maternal microchimerism, but the positive subjects were all negative at a follow-up 16 years later. The sensitivity of the method was estimated to 1/10.000. Conclusions/Significance These results show no association between SLE and maternal microchimerism. The frequency of maternal microchimerism in the blood of adults overall may be lower than earlier reported.
Research Paper: Knowledge-based Methods to Help Clinicians Find Answers in MEDLINE

OBJECTIVES Large databases of published medical research can support clinical decision making by providing physicians with the best available evidence. The time required to obtain optimal results from these databases using traditional systems often makes accessing the databases impractical for clinicians. This article explores whether a hybrid approach of augmenting traditional information retrieval with knowledge-based methods facilitates finding practical clinical advice in the research literature. DESIGN Three experimental systems were evaluated for their ability to find MEDLINE citations providing answers to clinical questions of different complexity. The systems (SemRep, Essie, and CQA-1.0), which rely on domain knowledge and semantic processing to varying extents, were evaluated separately and in combination. Fifteen therapy and prevention questions in three categories (general, intermediate, and specific questions) were searched. The first 10 citations retrieved by each system were randomized, anonymized, and evaluated on a three-point scale. The reasons for ratings were documented. MEASUREMENTS Metrics evaluating the overall performance of a system (mean average precision, binary preference) and metrics evaluating the number of relevant documents in the first several presented to a physician were used. RESULTS Scores (mean average precision = 0.57, binary preference = 0.71) for fusion of the retrieval results of the three systems are significantly (p < 0.01) better than those for any individual system. All three systems present three to four relevant citations in the first five for any question type. CONCLUSION The improvements in finding relevant MEDLINE citations due to knowledge-based processing show promise in assisting physicians to answer questions in clinical practice.
Scalable and Distributed Clustering via Lightweight Coresets

Coresets are compact representations of data sets such that models trained on a coreset are provably competitive with models trained on the full data set. As such, they have been successfully used to scale up clustering models to massive data sets. While existing approaches generally only allow for multiplicative approximation errors, we propose a novel notion of coresets called lightweight coresets that allows for both multiplicative and additive errors. We provide a single algorithm to construct light-weight coresets for k-Means clustering, Bregman clustering and maximum likelihood estimation of Gaussian mixture models. The algorithm is substantially faster than existing constructions, embarrassingly parallel and resulting coresets are smaller. In an extensive experimental evaluation, we demonstrate that the proposed method outperforms existing coreset constructions.
Evaluation of 3D correspondence methods for building point distribution models of the kidney

Statistical shape models (SSM) in general and point distribution models (PDM) in particular, are used for a variety of medical applications. A prerequisite condition to build a PDM is to establish the correspondences between landmarks across sample models in a given training population. Previously both image registration based correspondence building algorithms as well as surface parameterization based correspondence establishment algorithms have been proposed. In this paper, we present comparative studies on 25 kidney samples of two state-of-the-art correspondence methods. More specifically, we compare a diffeomorphic demons image registration algorithm based correspondence method to a surface parameterization based method where the correspondences are optimized with Minimal Description Length (MDL) principle. The results suggest that the studied image registration based correspondence method has a superior performance over the studied surface parameterization based method.
Decolonizing Knowledge about Indigenous Education: Perspectives from Elementary French Immersion Teachers

Rooted in the implementation of residential schools, Indigenous education has had various meanings and integration strategies over time and still remains a political, cultural, and controversial topic. While the Ministry of Education of Ontario has made Indigenous education a priority, the literature shows little research within the context of French Immersion programs. This qualitative research examines the perspectives of three French Immersion teachers on Indigenous education, and on the factors and strategies influencing the way they integrate Indigenous perspectives in their practice. Following an anti-oppressive framework, this research challenges the concept of Indigenous education and offers a critical approach for educators to integrate Indigenous perspectives in current and relevant ways. One of the main findings echoed the concept of decolonizing the classroom and revealed the need for teachers to move beyond Eurocentric stereotypes about Indigenous people and engage in more authentic discussions. For the integration of Indigenous perspectives and knowledge into French Immersion classrooms, participants’ recommendations include the incorporation of traditional Indigenous worldviews as an effective and relevant source of knowledge. Finally, by reflecting on their own positionality on Indigenous education, the participants expressed a need for teachers to critically engage their students in understanding the intricate relationships between Indigenous peoples and Canada.
A Reconfigurable PCB test system based on VI

This paper introduces a PCB test system based on the Virtual Instrument and Reconfigurable technology, which can quickly test and locate the circuit fault. The system involves the instruments based on PXI and GPIB, a testing signal generator based on reconfigurable CPLD, and fault diagnostic software based on database technique. The hardware and software of the system is reconfigurable, it can produce the input signals which are essential to the running PCB in the offline circumstance, while testing and saving the output signals of the PCB for the fault diagnostic. In practical use, the system works appropriately and meets the engineering demand.
Differential effects of sleep deprivation on cognitive performance

The study examines the question whether individual vulnerability to effects of sleep deprivation on cognitive and psychomotor performance is related to personality traits. 46 participants stayed for 13 days in DLR’s sleep laboratory AMSAN. Sleep was restricted totally or partly every three nights. The level of performance was monitored in three-hour intervals with a cognitive test battery. Most participants showed the strongest performance decrements after 26 and 32 hours of sleep deprivation. Especially for tests of sustained attention, calculated change scores were negatively related to extraversion as measured by the Freiburger Personality Inventory. The findings confirm parts of Eysenck’s theory of personality that introverts due to their higher cortical arousal level need less external stimulation to perform.
Unlocking Expatriates’ Job Creativity: The Role of Cultural Learning, and Metacognitive and Motivational Cultural Intelligence

ABSTRACT In this article, we extend Amabile's componential theory of creativity to account for cross-cultural creativity by conceptualizing cultural learning as a crucial component in the creativity relevant process. We hypothesize a significant positive relationship between cultural learning and expatriates’ cross-cultural job creativity, and that this relationship will be enhanced by domain learning and the cultural distance between the host and home countries. Moreover, we propose that expatriates with higher metacognitive and motivational cultural intelligence will engage in greater cultural learning, which in turn will be related to job creativity. Data from 219 expatriate-supervisor dyads of 36 Chinese multinational companies reveal that metacognitive CQ and motivational CQ are indeed positive antecedents to cultural learning, which in turn positively relates to cross-cultural job creativity, especially for high domain learning expatriates who work in a foreign culture not vastly different from home. Our findings make significant contributions to the existing literature on creativity and provide nuanced understanding of the relationship between cultural intelligence, cultural learning and cross-cultural job creativity. Our findings also have important implications for expatriate management.
Segmenting “simple” objects using RGB-D

Segmenting “simple” objects using low-level visual cues is an important capability for a vision system to learn in an unsupervised manner. We define a “simple” object as a compact region enclosed by depth and/or contact boundary in the scene. We propose a segmentation process to extract all the “simple” objects that builds on the fixation-based segmentation framework [1] that segments a region given a point anywhere inside it. In this work, we augment that framework with a fixation strategy to automatically select points inside the “simple” objects and a post-segmentation process to select only the regions corresponding to the “simple” objects in the scene. A novel characteristic of our approach is the incorporation of border ownership, the knowledge about the object side of a boundary pixel. We evaluate the process on a publicly available RGB-D dataset [2] and find that the proposed method successfully extracts 91.4% of all objects in the dataset.
Colonoscopy uptake for high-risk individuals with a family history of colorectal neoplasia

Background: Colonoscopic screening is recommended for first-degree relatives of patients diagnosed with colorectal cancer (CRC) or colorectal adenomatous polyps (CAP) before the age of 60 years. This has the potential to reduce CRC-related morbidity and mortality, but uptake is currently inadequate. Methods: The aim of the study was to compare the effectiveness of standard information versus a nurse-led tailored intervention designed to promote uptake of colonoscopy screening by siblings of CRC or CAP patients. A randomized controlled trial was conducted. Digestive surgeons and gastroenterologists recruited index patients who developed CRC or CAP before the age of 60 years. All index patients received standard screening information for their siblings, in keeping with current guidelines. Centrally computerized randomization of index patients resulted in allocating all their siblings to the same group, intervention or control. The tailored intervention targeted the index patient first, to help them convey information to their siblings. The nurse then provided the siblings with tailored information based on their answers to a self-questionnaire which explored health behaviors, derived from psychosocial models of prevention. Then the siblings were given a personalized information leaflet to hand to their regular physician. The primary endpoint was the rate of documented colonoscopy performed in siblings within 1 year after diagnosis of the index patient. The intent-to-treat analysis included siblings who refused to participate in the study. Statistical analysis was adjusted for intrafamilial correlation. Results: A total of 304 siblings of 125 index patients were included: 160 in the intervention group and 144 in the control group. The rate of colonoscopy uptake among siblings was 56.3% in the intervention group and 35.4% in the control group (P = 0.0027). The respective rates after exclusion of refusals were 69.2% and 37.0% (P < 0.0001). More lesions were detected in the intervention group (1 invasive cancer and 11 advanced adenomas vs 5 advanced adenomas; P = 0.022). Conclusions: This study demonstrates the effectiveness of a nurse-led tailored intervention designed to promote colonoscopy screening uptake by siblings of patients diagnosed with CRC or CAP before age 60 years. Such tailored interventions that also involve physicians should help to reduce CRC-related mortality.
NoC synthesis flow for customized domain specific multiprocessor systems-on-chip

The growing complexity of customizable single-chip multiprocessors is requiring communication resources that can only be provided by a highly-scalable communication infrastructure. This trend is exemplified by the growing number of network-on-chip (NoC) architectures that have been proposed recently for system-on-chip (SoC) integration. Developing NoC-based systems tailored to a particular application domain is crucial for achieving high-performance, energy-efficient customized solutions. The effectiveness of this approach largely depends on the availability of an ad hoc design methodology that, starting from a high-level application specification, derives an optimized NoC configuration with respect to different design objectives and instantiates the selected application specific on-chip micronetwork. Automatic execution of these design steps is highly desirable to increase SoC design productivity. This work illustrates a complete synthesis flow, called Netchip, for customized NoC architectures, that partitions the development work into major steps (topology mapping, selection, and generation) and provides proper tools for their automatic execution (SUNMAP, xpipescompiler). The entire flow leverages the flexibility of a fully reusable and scalable network components library called xpipes, consisting of highly-parameterizable network building blocks (network interface, switches, switch-to-switch links) that are design-time tunable and composable to achieve arbitrary topologies and customized domain-specific NoC architectures. Several experimental case studies are presented In the work, showing the powerful design space exploration capabilities of the proposed methodology and tools.
Integrating Technology Into Mother-Tongue Education:Examples from Hebrew

: This paper describes the current approach to the instruction of Hebrew as a mother-tongue (L1) language based on technological developments and on the relationship between technology and pedagogy. As such, we rely on well-known models of integrating computerized tools and distance learning in the educational system, while emphasizing the potential contribution of these environments to L1 education. At the core of this paper is the combination of linguistic and didactic approaches to L1 teaching that bring together both theoretical and functional aspects of learning and teaching language via a computer. The focus here is on technologically-based L1 learning environments that combine different types of computerized tools within a comprehensive language-learning/teaching system that is designed for facilitating and improving language skills. This system is cognitively motivated, and is modeled on a combination of elements, such as principles of constructivist, social, and active learning. The structural-conceptual framework of this environment complies with principles of both local and global connectivity and hierarchy. For example, at the local level, learning materials are connected through a hypertext structure; at the global level, the entire system is inter-connected, with assignments linked to dictionaries and relevant websites, and the learners themselves connected through email and forums. The teaching/learning processes that take place within this L1 environment are illustrated by examples of both online and offline computerized courses.
Nested Monotony for Variational Inequalities over Product of Spaces and Convergence of Iterative Algorithms

The auxiliary problem principle has been proposed by the first author as a framework to describe and analyze iterative algorithms such as gradient as well as decomposition/coordination algorithms for optimization problems (Refs. 1-3) and variational inequalities (Ref. 4). The key assumption to prove the global and strong convergence of such algorithms, as well as of most of the other algorithms proposed in the literature, is the strong monotony of the operator involved in the variational inequalities. In this paper, we consider variational inequalities defined over a product of spaces and we introduce a new property of strong nested monotony, which is weaker than the ordinary overall strong monotony generally assumed. In some sense, this new concept seems to be a minimal requirement to insure convergence of the algorithms alluded to above. A convergence theorem based on this weaker assumption is given. Application of this result to the computation of Nash equilibria can be found in another paper (Ref. 5).
Oleic Acid Biosynthesis in Plasmodium falciparum: Characterization of the Stearoyl-CoA Desaturase and Investigation as a Potential Therapeutic Target

Background Plasmodium falciparum parasitization of erythrocytes causes a substantial increase in the levels of intracellular fatty acids, notably oleic acid. How parasites acquire this monounsaturated fatty acid has remained enigmatic. Here, we report on the biochemical and enzymatic characterization of stearoyl-CoA desaturase (SCD) in P. falciparum. Methodology/Principal Findings Metabolic labeling experiments allowed us to demonstrate the production of oleic acid from stearic acid both in lysates of parasites incubated with [14C]-stearoyl-CoA and in parasite-infected erythrocytes labeled with [14C]-stearic acid. Optimal SCD activity was detected in schizonts, the stage of maximal membrane synthesis. This activity correlated with a late trophozoite stage-specific induction of PFE0555w transcripts. PFE0555w harbors a typical SCD signature. Similar to mammalian SCDs, this protein was found to be associated with the endoplasmic reticulum, as determined with PFE0555w-GFP tagged transgenic P. falciparum. Importantly, these parasites exhibited increased rates of stearic to oleic acid conversion, providing additional evidence that PFE0555w encodes the plasmodial SCD (PfSCD). These findings prompted us to assess the activity of sterculic acid analogues, known to be specific Δ9-desaturase inhibitors. Methyl sterculate inhibited the synthesis of oleic acid both with parasite lysates and infected erythrocytes, most likely by targeting PfSCD. This compound exhibited significant, rapid and irreversible antimalarial activity against asexual blood stages. This parasiticidal effect was antagonized by oleic acid. Conclusion/Significance Our study provides evidence that parasite-mediated fatty acid modification is important for blood-stage survival and provides a new strategy to develop a novel antimalarial therapeutic based on the inhibition of PfSCD.