Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Macrophage Migration Inhibitory Factor in Cancer

The objective of this study was to investigate the expression of macrophage migration inhibitory factor (MIF) in patients with colorectal cancer (GIS) and malignant melanoma (MM). The study group consists of pathologically verified colorectal cancer (n = 63) and malignant melanoma (n = 65) pateints and healthy controls (n = 25). Serum MIF concentrations were determined by enyzme-linked immunosorbent assay. Serum values of the patients were significantly higher than the controls (p < 0.001 for GIS, p = 0.032 for MM). Diagnostic sensitivity and specificity were calculated for MIF for colorectal and malignant melanoma. The results demonstrate that colorectal cancer express and secrete large amounts of MIF.
Age-dependent Preferential Dense-Core Vesicle Exocytosis in Neuroendocrine Cells Revealed by Newly Developed Monomeric Fluorescent Timer Protein

Using a newly developed protein-based fluorescent timer, mK-GO, which changes color with a predictable time course, we show that Rab27A effectors, rabphilin and Slp4-a, regulate age-dependent exocytosis of secretory vesicles in PC12 cells, and suggest that coordinate functions of the effectors are required for regulated secretory pathway.
Current Status and Future Prospects of the SNO+ Experiment

SNO+is a large liquid scintillator-based experiment located 2 km underground at SNOLAB, Sudbury,Canada. It reuses the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory detector, consisting of a 12m diameter acrylic vessel which will be filled with about 780 tonnes of ultra-pure liquid scintillator. Designed as a multipurpose neutrino experiment, the primary goal of SNO+ is a search for the neutrinoless double-beta decay (0BB) of 130Te. In Phase I, the detector will be loaded with 0.3% natural tellurium, corresponding to nearly 800 kg of 130Te, with an expected effective Majorana neutrino mass sensitivity in the region of 55–133meV, just above the inverted mass hierarchy. Recently, the possibility of deploying up to ten times more natural tellurium has been investigated, which would enable SNO+ to achieve sensitivity deep into the parameter space for the inverted neutrino mass hierarchy in the future. Additionally, SNO+ aims to measure reactor antineutrino oscillations, low energy solar neutrinos, and geoneutrinos, to be sensitive to supernova neutrinos, and to search for exotic physics. A first phase with the detector filled with water will begin soon, with the scintillator phase expected to start after a few months of water data taking. The 01BB Phase I is foreseen for 2017.
Dialogical Ethics: Imagining the Other

This article explores dialogical ethics in terms of imagining the other. Following Bakhtin it suggests that in the dialogical imagination therapists are like novelists recounting the voice of a character: they take the words of clients and make them their own as part of a therapeutic dialogue or narrative. This is a creative act of the imagination that attempts to make sense of the world through the other's eyes and invites the client to do likewise while contributing a therapeutic intention and perspective. The article draws on the writings of Bakhtin and Levinas and contemporary therapists influenced by their ideas in order to locate therapy as a dialogical ethics. This is illustrated by a detailed example from therapy practice.
Image method for efficiently simulating small‐room acoustics

Image methods are commonly used for the analysis of the acoustic properties of enclosures. In this paper we discuss the theoretical and practical use of image techniques for simulating, on a digital computer, the impulse response between two points in a small rectangular room. The resulting impulse response, when convolved with any desired input signal, such as speech, simulates room reverberation of the input signal. This technique is useful in signal processing or psychoacoustic studies. The entire process is carried out on a digital computer so that a wide range of room parameters can be studied with accurate control over the experimental conditions. A fortran implementation of this model has been included.
Early corneal wound healing and inflammatory responses after refractive lenticule extraction (ReLEx).

PURPOSE To compare the early corneal wound repair and inflammatory responses after refractive lenticule extraction (ReLEx) and LASIK. METHODS Eighteen rabbits underwent ReLEx and another 18 underwent LASIK. Each group was divided into three subgroups of six rabbits each and these were subjected to refractive corrections of -3.00 diopters (D), -6.00 D, and -9.00 D. Slit lamp photography, anterior segment optical coherence tomography (AS-OCT), corneal topography, and in vivo confocal microscopy were performed 1 day after surgery. After euthanatization, the corneas were subjected to immunofluorescent staining for fibronectin, CD11b, Ki-67, and TUNEL assay. RESULTS On slit lamp microscopy, all corneas appeared clear pre- and postoperatively in both ReLEx and LASIK eyes. Corneal topography showed a more significant corneal flattening after LASIK than after ReLEx as the degree of correction was increased (P = 0.916 after -3.00 D correction to P = 0.097 after -9.00 D correction). In vivo confocal microscopy showed less light-scattering particles at the flap interface after ReLEx compared with LASIK. Immunostaining of fibronectin showed a less abundant expression in corneas that underwent ReLEx than LASIK. The differences became more marked as the power of correction was increased. Similar trend was seen in the number of CD11b-positive cells (P = 0.476 after -3.00 D correction to P < 0.001 after -9.00D correction). There was no marked disparity observed in cell death and proliferation between post-ReLEx and -LASIK eyes. CONCLUSIONS This study has shown that the ReLEx procedure may result in less topographic changes, inflammation, and early extracellular matrix deposition than LASIK, especially at high refractive correction.
Fission Yeast Cdk7 Controls Gene Expression through both Its CAK and C-Terminal Domain Kinase Activities

ABSTRACT Cyclin-dependent kinase (Cdk) activation and RNA polymerase II transcription are linked by the Cdk7 kinase, which phosphorylates Cdks as a trimeric Cdk-activating kinase (CAK) complex, and serine 5 within the polymerase II (Pol II) C-terminal domain (CTD) as transcription factor TFIIH-bound CAK. However, the physiological importance of integrating these processes is not understood. Besides the Cdk7 ortholog Mcs6, fission yeast possesses a second CAK, Csk1. The two enzymes have been proposed to act redundantly to activate Cdc2. Using an improved analogue-sensitive Mcs6-as kinase, we show that Csk1 is not a relevant CAK for Cdc2. Further analyses revealed that Csk1 lacks a 20-amino-acid sequence required for its budding yeast counterpart, Cak1, to bind Cdc2. Transcriptome profiling of the Mcs6-as mutant in the presence or absence of the budding yeast Cak1 kinase, in order to uncouple the CTD kinase and CAK activities of Mcs6, revealed an unanticipated role of the CAK branch in the transcriptional control of the cluster of genes implicated in ribosome biogenesis and cell growth. The analysis of a Cdc2 CAK site mutant confirmed these data. Our data show that the Cdk7 kinase modulates transcription through its well-described RNA Pol II CTD kinase activity and also through the Cdc2-activating kinase activity.
Phase changes in random m‐ary search trees and generalized quicksort

We propose a uniform approach to describe the phase change of the limiting distribution of space measures in random m‐ary search trees: the space requirement, when properly normalized, is asymptotically normally distributed for m≤26 and does not have a fixed limiting distribution for m>26. Our tools are based on the method of moments and asymptotic solutions of differential equations, and are applicable to secondary cost measures of quicksort with median‐of‐(2t+1) for which the same phase change occurs at t=58. Both problems are essentially special cases of the generalized quicksort of Hennequin in which a sample of m(t+1)−1 elements are used to select m−1 equi‐spaced ranks that are used in turn to partition the input into m subfiles. A complete description of the numbers at which the phase change occurs is given. For example, when m is fixed and t varies, the phase change occurs at (m, t)={(2, 58), (3, 19), (4, 10), (5, 6), (6, 4), …}. We also indicate some applications of our approach to other problems including bucket recursive trees. A general framework on “asymptotic transfers” of the underlying recurrence is also given. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Random Struct. Alg. , 19: 316–358, 2001
Decoupled multiagent path planning via incremental sequential convex programming

This paper presents a multiagent path planning algorithm based on sequential convex programming (SCP) that finds locally optimal trajectories. Previous work using SCP efficiently computes motion plans in convex spaces with no static obstacles. In many scenarios where the spaces are non-convex, previous SCP-based algorithms failed to find feasible solutions because the convex approximation of collision constraints leads to forming a sequence of infeasible optimization problems. This paper addresses this problem by tightening collision constraints incrementally, thus forming a sequence of more relaxed, feasible intermediate optimization problems. We show that the proposed algorithm increases the probability of finding feasible trajectories by 33% for teams of more than three vehicles in non-convex environments. Further, we show that decoupling the multiagent optimization problem to a number of single-agent optimization problems leads to significant improvement in computational tractability. We develop a decoupled implementation of the proposed algorithm, abbreviated dec-iSCP. We show that dec-iSCP runs 14% faster and finds feasible trajectories with higher probability than a decoupled implementation of previous SCP-based algorithms. The proposed algorithm is real-time implementable and is validated through hardware experiments on a team of quadrotors.
Functional and Structural Characterization of Thermostable d-Amino Acid Aminotransferases from Geobacillus spp

ABSTRACT d-Amino acid aminotransferases (d-AATs) from Geobacillus toebii SK1 and Geobacillus sp. strain KLS1 were cloned and characterized from a genetic, catalytic, and structural aspect. Although the enzymes were highly thermostable, their catalytic capability was approximately one-third of that of highly active Bacilli enzymes, with respective turnover rates of 47 and 55 s−1 at 50°C. The Geobacillus enzymes were unique and shared limited sequence identities of below 45% with d-AATs from mesophilic and thermophilic Bacillus spp. , except for a hypothetical protein with a 72% identity from the G. kaustophilus genome. Structural alignments showed that most key residues were conserved in the Geobacillus enzymes, although the conservative residues just before the catalytic lysine were distinctively changed: the 140-LRcD-143 sequence in Bacillusd-AATs was 144-EYcY-147 in the Geobacillusd-AATs. When the EYcY sequence from the SK1 enzyme was mutated into LRcD, a 68% increase in catalytic activity was observed, while the binding affinity toward α-ketoglutarate decreased by half. The mutant was very close to the wild-type in thermal stability, indicating that the mutations did not disturb the overall structure of the enzyme. Homology modeling also suggested that the two tyrosine residues in the EYcY sequence from the Geobacillusd-AATs had a π/π interaction that was replaceable with the salt bridge interaction between the arginine and aspartate residues in the LRcD sequence.
Reciprocal Cooperation and the Moderating Effect of Individualism: A Five-Country Negotiation Study

ABSTRACT Researchers have conceptualized the problem-solving approach to include cooperation between negotiators in order to achieve mutually beneficial outcomes. The observed cooperation between parties embodies the concept of positive reciprocity where negotiators match the cooperative bargaining strategy of their counterparts. Using this premise, the current study investigates reciprocity through the relationship between negotiators’ perceptions of their counterpart's cooperative behaviors and their own reported behaviors. The mitigating effect of individualism-collectivism on the above relationship is also explored. The findings provide empirical evidence that negotiators’ perceptions of their counterpart's cooperative behaviors are positively related to their own strategy. This relationship was consistently supported across five groups of business negotiators: Canadian Anglophone, Greek, Mexican, Filipino, and American. However, this positive reciprocal relationship is negated when the negotiator comes from an individualistic-type culture.
Impact of Power Control in Wireless Sensor Networks Powered by Ambient Energy Harvesting (WSN-HEAP) for Railroad Health Monitoring

The use of wireless sensor networks (WSNs) for structural health monitoring is gaining popularity since it allows for a low-cost, rapid and robust assessment of structural integrity. Meanwhile, recent advances in ambient energy harvesting technology have made it a viable alternative source of energy for powering WSNs. WSNs powered by ambient energy harvesting (WSN-HEAP) are potentially moreuseful and economical in the long term than traditionalbattery-powered WSNs as they can operate for very long periods of time without the need for human involvement, thus paving the way towards alleviating energy constraints that continue to challenge WSNs. In this paper, we evaluate the impact of transmit power control on the usefulness of a multi-sink WSN-HEAP, deployed in uniform string topology for railway track monitoring. Based on current achievable energy harvesting rates from track deflections, and commercially available sensor mote parameters, our analysis reveals that availability can be maximised while maintaining good data delivery ratio and throughput-fairness by appropriate setting of the transmit power over a wide range of deployment density, Signal-to-Noise Ratio requirements and energy harvesting characteristics.
Motion statistics based region merging in video sequences

An important step in most techniques for video segmentation is the merging of regions having similar motion. We propose a new motion based similarity measure between regions that explicitly incorporates uncertainty in the estimation of motion parameters. A new hierarchical merging algorithm using this measure is developed. The robustness of the proposed algorithm has been confirmed by experiments on both artificial and real data. A comparative analysis showed improved performance over other methods.
Quantificational features in distributional word representations

Do distributional word representations encode the linguistic regularities that theories of meaning argue they should encode? We address this question in the case of the logical properties (monotonicity, force) of quantiﬁcational words such as everything (in the object domain) and always (in the time domain). Using the vector offset approach to solving word analogies, we ﬁnd that the skip-gram model of distributional semantics behaves in a way that is remarkably consistent with encoding these features in some domains, with accuracy approaching 100%, especially with medium-sized context windows. Accuracy in others domains was less impressive. We compare the performance of the model to the behavior of human participants, and ﬁnd that humans performed well even where the models struggled.
Surveillance of prophylactic mastectomy

Prophylactic mastectomy, prophylactic oophorectomy, and antiestrogen chemoprevention are currently the only available methods for breast cancer risk reduction. To the authors' knowledge there is little published information regarding the prevalence of prophylactic mastectomy for the primary prevention of breast cancer among high‐risk women or for the prevention of subsequent tumors among women with breast cancer.
Bioinspired Programming of Resistive Memory Devices for Implementing Spiking Neural Networks

In this work, we will focus on the role that non-volatile resistive memory technologies (RRAM) can play for modeling key features of biological synapses. We will present an architecture and a reading/programming strategy to emulate both Short and Long Term Plasticity (STP, LTP) rules using non-volatile OxRAM arrays. A visual-pattern extraction application is discussed using spiking neural networks. We demonstrated that Long-Term plasticity allows the neural networks to learn patterns and the Short Term plasticity allows to improve accuracy (reduction of the false positive events generated by white noise in the input data) in presence of significant background noise in the input data.
Prognosis of Patients With Nonspecific Neck Pain: Development and External Validation of a Prediction Rule for Persistence of Complaints

Study Design. Reanalysis of data from 3 randomized controlled trials. Objective. Development and validation of a prediction rule that estimates the probability of complaints persisting for at least 6 months in patients presenting with nonspecific neck pain in primary care. Summary of Background Data. A substantial proportion of the neck pain patients will develop chronic neck pain. An important question is whether we can identify patients at risk of persistent complaints at the first consultation with the physician, based on their personal characteristics? A prediction model that quantifies prognosis in patients with nonspecific neck pain is not available. Methods. The study population consisted of a sample (n = 468) from the adult primary care population (18–70 years) in The Netherlands presenting with nonspecific neck pain. The primary outcome measure was global perceived recovery measured at 6 months of follow-up. Seventeen baseline characteristics of the patients were included in the analysis. Significant predictors were identified by multivariable backward stepwise logistic regression analysis. A score chart was constructed by using the regression coefficient estimates. The score chart was externally validated in a cohort of patients with nonspecific neck pain (n = 315), who participated in a randomized controlled trial in the United Kingdom (PANTHER-trial). Results. The multivariable analysis resulted in a set of 9 predictors. The score chart has a discriminative ability of 0.66. External validation of the score chart showed a discriminative ability of 0.65, an adequate calibration, a good fit, and a low explained variation. Conclusion. We developed a score chart, estimating the probability of persistent complaints at 6 months follow-up for patients with nonspecific neck pain. This chart performed well in the study population and external validation population. The prediction which patients are more likely to develop persistent complaints is significantly improved by the score chart.
Attribute Priming Effects and Presidential Candidate Evaluation: The Conditionality of Political Sophistication

Traditionally, two competing claims have arisen that attempt to explain the role of political sophistication in media effectiveness. I reassess the positive versus negative impacts of political sophistication on media priming effects by considering a curvilinear approach. I combine public opinion data (National Election Studies) on candidate selection criteria in 1992 and 2000 presidential elections with content analyses of campaign news coverage to see which segment of voters at different sophistication levels is most susceptible to media agendas. Quadratic regression analyses reveal that an inverted U-shaped relationship exists between voters' susceptibility to campaign news and their level of political sophistication. Such a curvilinear relationship means that the moderately sophisticated are more likely to accept news agendas than the least or most sophisticated. The findings illuminate the long-standing debate about the inconsistent linear relationships between the two variables, providing a more cogent explanation underlying media priming effects.
Complex tensor factorization in modulation frequency domain for single-channel speech enhancement

This paper proposes a novel method of speech enhancement using tensor factorization, which is extended from complex non-negative matrix factorization (CMF), in the modulation frequency domain. Non-negative matrix factorization (NMF) has attracted a great deal of attention as a recent approach to speech enhancement for its ease of feature detection in the acoustic frequency domain. However, previous studies have suggested that spectral processing like spectral subtraction in the modulation frequency domain has been an effective scheme for speech enhancement. The use of not only the amplitude information but also the phase information is required in the modulation frequency domain to utilize more information on speech. Thus, we present new tensor factorization on the complex spectrum in the modulation frequency domain for single-channel speech enhancement. The amplitude and phase spectrum in the acoustic frequency domain can be estimated by using the factorized complex spectra in the modulation frequency domain. Numerical experiments were carried out under several noisy conditions to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed method. The signal to error ratio and signal to noise ratio loss were used as objective measures. The results revealed that the proposed method out-performed the existing methods of speech enhancement based on NMF and CMF.
Correlations between Family Environment and Relationships of Young Adult Siblings

Factors which influence the nature of relationships among young adult siblings were examined. 107 undergraduate students completed a questionnaire about their current relationships with siblings and the Family Environment Scale. Variables which affected these relationships included sex of the respondent, the sex of each of the siblings in the family and whether the family was intact or blended. The Family Environment Scale subscales of Cohesion, Expressiveness, Intellectual-Cultural Orientation and Active-Recreational Orientation were correlated with the relationships of adult siblings. Differences were noted in how these variables affected the relationship with the closest/only sibling versus all the siblings in the family.
Recommending products to customers using opinion mining of online product reviews and features

E-Commerce sites are gaining popularity across the world. People visit them not just to shop products but also to know the opinion of other buyers and users of products. Online customer reviews are helping consumers to decide which products to buy and also companies to understand the buying behavior of consumers. In this paper we have created a prototype Web based system for recommending and comparing products sold online. We have used natural language processing to automatically read reviews and used Naive Bayes classification to determine the polarity of reviews. We have also extracted the reviews of product features and the polarity of those features. We graphically present to the customer, the better of two products based on various criteria including the star ratings, date of review, the helpfulness score of the review and the polarity of reviews.
Reasoning about recursive procedures with parameters

In this paper we extend the model of program variables from the Refinement Calculus [2] in order to be able to reason more algebraically about recursive procedures with parameters and local variables. We extend the meaning of variable substitution or freeness from the syntax to the semantics of program expressions. We give a predicate transformer semantics to recursive procedures with parameters and prove a refinement rule for introduction of recursive procedure calls. We also prove a Hoare total correctness rule for our recursive procedures. These rules have no side conditions and are easier to apply to programs than the ones in the literature. The theory is built having in mind mechanical verification support using theorem provers like PVS [18] or HOL [11].