Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Cocaine Enhances HIV-1 Infectivity in Monocyte Derived Dendritic Cells by Suppressing microRNA-155

Cocaine and other drugs of abuse increase HIV-induced immunopathogenesis; and neurobiological mechanisms of cocaine addiction implicate a key role for microRNAs (miRNAs), single-stranded non-coding RNAs that regulate gene expression and defend against viruses. In fact, HIV defends against miRNAs by actively suppressing the expression of polycistronic miRNA cluster miRNA-17/92, which encodes miRNAs including miR-20a. IFN-g production by natural killer cells is regulated by miR-155 and this miRNA is also critical to dendritic cell (DC) maturation. However, the impact of cocaine on miR-155 expression and subsequent HIV replication is unknown. We examined the impact of cocaine on two miRNAs, miR-20a and miR-155, which are integral to HIV replication, and immune activation. Using miRNA isolation and analysis, RNA interference, quantitative real time PCR, and reporter assays we explored the effects of cocaine on miR-155 and miR-20 in the context of HIV infection. Here we demonstrate using monocyte-derived dendritic cells (MDCCs) that cocaine significantly inhibited miR-155 and miR-20a expression in a dose dependent manner. Cocaine and HIV synergized to lower miR-155 and miR-20a in MDDCs by 90%. Cocaine treatment elevated LTR-mediated transcription and PU.1 levels in MDCCs. But in context of HIV infection, PU.1 was reduced in MDDCs regardless of cocaine presence. Cocaine increased DC-SIGN and and decreased CD83 expression in MDDC, respectively. Overall, we show that cocaine inhibited miR-155 and prevented maturation of MDDCs; potentially, resulting in increased susceptibility to HIV-1. Our findings could lead to the development of novel miRNA-based therapeutic strategies targeting HIV infected cocaine abusers.
Interactive Multimodal Learning on 100 Million Images

This paper presents Blackthorn, an efficient interactive multimodal learning approach facilitating analysis of multimedia collections of 100 million items on a single high-end workstation. This is achieved by efficient data compression and optimizations to the interactive learning process. The compressed i-I64 data representation costs tens of bytes per item yet preserves most of the visual and textual semantic information. The optimized interactive learning model scores the i-I64-compressed data directly, greatly reducing the computational requirements. The experiments show that Blackthorn is up to 105x faster than the conventional relevance feedback baseline. Blackthorn is shown to vastly outperform the baseline with respect to recall over time. Blackthorn reaches up to 92% of the precision achieved by the baseline, validating the efficacy of the i-I64 representation. On the YFCC100M dataset, Blackthorn performes one complete interaction round in 0.7 seconds. Blackthorn thus opens multimedia collections comprising 100 million items to learning-based analysis in fully interactive time.
Semantic coordination: a new approximation method and its application in the music domain

A data tablet has an electrode matrix that includes two sets of electrodes, the sets of electrodes being arranged along coordinate axes on opposite sides of an intermediate insulating layer in such a way that the electrodes in one set are orthogonal to the electrodes in the other set. The electrodes of each of said sets constituting a first group and a second group, the electrodes in said first group being connected respectively to leading lines arranged in the same plane as of said electrodes in said first group, and the electrodes in said second group being connected via through-holes formed in said intermediate insulating layer respectively to other leader lines arranged in the same plane as of said electrodes of the other set. The data tablet can be produced by forming a first circuit pattern on a substrate of an electrical insulating material by printing, then printing an insulating pattern on the substrate thereby forming the intermediate insulating layer overlaid on the first circuit pattern, and printing a second circuit pattern on the intermediate insulating layer. When the second circuit pattern is printed, the parts of said pattern on the apertures in the intermediate insulating layer overlie the first circuit pattern under the intermediate insulating layer.
OPTIMIZATION OF GROWTH AND BIOACTIVE METABOLITE PRODUCTION: FUSARIUM SOLANI.

The present study aimed to evaluate optimize the growth and antibacterial activity of endophytic fungi isolated from Tylophora indica. Based on the morphological and molecular characteristic, the isolate was identified as Fusarium solani. Modified liquid medium (M2D) was used as a basal medium for growth and antibacterial activity. The growth and metabolite production were optimized with 4% dextrose, 0.05% yeast extract and aspartic acid (0.01%) as carbon, nitrogen and amino acid respectively. The optimum pH and temperature of the strain were 6.0, 25Â±2 Â°C observed for growth and secondary metabolite production. The 9th day was found to be optimum incubation period of growth and secondary metabolite production. The metabolite showed maximum inhibition against Enterococcus faecalis, lowest inhibition zone was against Yersinia enterocolitica. The ESI-MS analysis of bio active compound shows the peak at 301m/z. Key words: Endophytic fungus, Tylophora indica, antibacterial activity, Medium Optimization, ESI -MS
Validation of the Cannabis Abuse Screening Test in a Sample of Cannabis Inpatients

The present study aims at validating the Cannabis Abuse Screening Test (CAST) in a clinical sample of adolescent and young adult cannabis users seeking treatment. Applying a classical test theory approach using DSM-IV diagnoses as gold standard, two versions of the CAST questionnaire are compared. The sample consisted of 140 subjects aged 15–26 years (mean 18.9) recruited from two cannabis treatment centers. Gold standard diagnoses were assessed using the Adolescent Diagnostic Interview-Light. Internal structure and consistency of the CAST were assessed by principal component analysis and Cronbach’s α. Optimal thresholds were defined using receiver operating characteristic analysis. Both the binary and the full test version revealed unidimensional structures with moderate to satisfactory internal consistency (α = 0.66 and 0.73). Screening properties were unsatisfactory when the CAST was compared against cannabis dependence. With regard to cannabis use disorders, both test versions yielded comparable and good sensitivity and specificity at cut-off 3 (binary: 92.2%, 66.7%) and 6 (full: 93.0%, 66.7%). Overall, the full CAST may be used for screening cannabis use disorders in clinical settings. Further research may use validation methods that do without gold standard.
Drug-Induced Hepatotoxicity of Select Herbal Therapies

The use of herbal botanicals and dietary supplements to treat and alleviate disease symptoms has increased over the past decades, and as a result, more research has been done to study the potential damaging effects of herbal products on the liver and other organs. Although reporting rates vary, cases have been published describing liver damage following herbal therapy. Studies have proposed multiple mechanisms of injury for these herbal preparations, and several potential risk factors have been identified including age, gender, polypharmacy, alcohol consumption, and genetic variability. Ingredients and other constituents often differ among products, and lack of standardization in manufacturing of these formulations makes it difficult to determine causality. The potential for drug-induced liver injury is often not known until the postmarketing period due to less rigorous safety testing and regulations.
Combining implicit and explicit topic representations for result diversification

Result diversification deals with ambiguous or multi-faceted queries by providing documents that cover as many subtopics of a query as possible. Various approaches to subtopic modeling have been proposed. Subtopics have been extracted internally, e.g., from retrieved documents, and externally, e.g., from Web resources such as query logs. Internally modeled subtopics are often implicitly represented, e.g., as latent topics, while externally modeled subtopics are often explicitly represented, e.g., as reformulated queries. We propose a framework that: i)combines both implicitly and explicitly represented subtopics; and ii)allows flexible combination of multiple external resources in a transparent and unified manner. Specifically, we use a random walk based approach to estimate the similarities of the explicit subtopics mined from a number of heterogeneous resources: click logs, anchor text, and web n-grams. We then use these similarities to regularize the latent topics extracted from the top-ranked documents, i.e., the internal (implicit) subtopics. Empirical results show that regularization with explicit subtopics extracted from the right resource leads to improved diversification results, indicating that the proposed regularization with (explicit) external resources forms better (implicit) topic models. Click logs and anchor text are shown to be more effective resources than web n-grams under current experimental settings. Combining resources does not always lead to better results, but achieves a robust performance. This robustness is important for two reasons: it cannot be predicted which resources will be most effective for a given query, and it is not yet known how to reliably determine the optimal model parameters for building implicit topic models.
Orphan drugs revisited: cost–effectiveness analysis of the addition of mifamurtide to the conventional treatment of osteosarcoma

Introduction: Mepact® (mifamurtide) is the first drug approved for the treatment of high-grade resectable non-metastatic osteosarcoma in patients aged 2–30 in the last 20 years. It follows a randomized clinical trial showing a statistically-significant and clinically-relevant decrease in the risk of death without compromising safety. Aim: This study assessed the cost–effectiveness and budget impact of mifamurtide. Methods: The economic evaluation was done on a hypothetical cohort of young patients under the age of 30 with high-grade, non-metastatic, resectable osteosarcoma. Standard chemotherapy without mifamurtide was used as comparator. A Markov model was adapted using Spanish costs and the results of the INT-0133 Phase III study. The analysis has been carried out from the perspective of the Spanish National Health Service, with a time horizon of up to 60 years in the base analysis. Results: The observed greater efficacy of mifamurtide in the trial translates into a gain of 3.03 (undiscounted) and 1.33 (discounted) quality-adjusted life years at an additional cost of €102,000. The estimated budgetary impact of using mifamurtide in 10–100% of the potential population would cost €671,000 and €6.7 million respectively. Conclusion: The cost per quality-adjusted life years gained with mifamurtide in Spain is in the low band (<€100,000) of the iCERs obtained by other orphan drugs and would have a limited and affordable cost in Spain.
"Yes, But...": A Reply To Phyllis Newcomer

tween general and special education and has come away with an addition to the literature of reasons for mainstreaming the mildly handicapped. She has reminded us that present limitations in the conceptual and psychometric underpinnings of many frequently used specialized tests and instructional approaches augment the current concern for the quality of diagnostic-remedial practices. Her major intention, however, is to write an educational tract advocating the consulting teacher as &dquo;the who&dquo; who is to resolve the boundary dispute. Since the consultant teacher model has been previously advocated, notably by McKenzie (1969, 1972) and others (McKenzie, Egner, Knight, Perelman, Schneider, & Garvin, 1970), one must consider what strength of persuasion is added to this position by examining the cogency and coherence of the argu-
Annual Reassignment of Teachers: An Important Ingredient of Nongrading

"For a decade, the nongraded school has been a much discussed educational innovation, particularly at the elementary school level. But the extent of its implementation is a matter of disagreement. Some current discourse would suggest that nongraded schools are scattered rather profusely across the country and that there are few communities without one. Depth studies suggest, on the other hand, that there has been more tampering with labels than with actual practices and that relatively few 'nongraded' schools have taken advantage of nongraded concepts to redesign curriculum, instruction, and evaluation" (2). When school districts embark on a
Conjugation and Deconjugation Reactions within the Fetoplacental Compartment in a Sheep Model: A Key Factor Determining Bisphenol A Fetal Exposure

The widespread human exposure to bisphenol A (BPA), an endocrine disruptor targeting developmental processes, underlines the need to better understand the mechanisms of fetal exposure. Animal studies have shown that at a late stage of pregnancy BPA is efficiently conjugated by the fetoplacental unit, mainly into BPA-glucuronide (BPA-G), which remains trapped within the fetoplacental unit. Fetal exposure to BPA-G might in turn contribute to in situ exposure to bioactive BPA, following its deconjugation into parent BPA at the level of fetal sensitive tissues. The objectives of our study were 1) to characterize the BPA glucurono- and sulfoconjugation capabilities of the ovine fetal liver at different developmental stages, 2) to compare hepatic conjugation activities in human and sheep, and 3) to evaluate the extent of BPA conjugation and deconjugation processes in placenta and fetal gonads. At an early stage of pregnancy, and despite functional sulfoconjugation activity, ovine fetuses expressed low hepatic BPA conjugation capabilities, suggesting that this stage of development represents a critical window in terms of BPA exposure. Conversely, the late ovine fetus expressed an efficient detoxification system that metabolized BPA into BPA-G. Hepatic glucuronidation activities were quantitatively similar in adult sheep and humans. In placenta, BPA conjugation and BPA-G deconjugation activities were relatively balanced, whereas BPA-G hydrolysis was systematically higher than BPA conjugation in gonads. The possible reactivation of BPA-G into BPA could contribute to an increased exposure of fetal sensitive tissues to bioactive BPA in situ.
Changing the multilayer graphene properties after treatment in N-methylpyrrolidone

Multilayer graphene/N-methylpyrrolidone (MG/NMP) hybrid material was obtained using N-methylpyrrolidone intercalation of multilayer graphene followed by annealing at different temperatures. Carbon atoms hybridization changed from sp3 to sp2 depending on the process temperature and the intercalation time. New peaks (~1138 cm-1 and ~1510 cm-1) were found in the Raman spectra/ They associated with a change in the hybridization nature and the hydrogen atoms addition. This affects the electronic structure of multilayer graphene, thus making it possible to form a gap. Chemically modified graphene can be used in semiconductor electronic applications.
Making Differences Ordinary in Inclusive Classrooms

This article addresses the need to make differences ordinary as inclusive school programs are developed and implemented. Qualities that are hallmarks of inclusive classrooms and that ensure that differences become an ordinary part of classroom practices are then addressed. These qualities ensure that supports provided in the inclusive classroom are as natural and unobtrusive as possible, arranging student schedules so that the rhythm of the day for students with disabilities is as typical as possible, and ensuring that students with disabilities are full participants in the learning and social communities of the classroom.
Power spectrum equalization for ultrasonic image restoration

A method of image restoration for ultrasonic B-scan images has been proposed that need no a priori knowledge on the PSF (point spread function) of the imaging system and is feasible for in vivo applications. The entire system's response, including the interposed medium and possible transducer defects, is estimated from the degraded image itself with a few simple operations. The ultrasonic image is restored based only on a knowledge of the estimated PSF and on the spectral characteristics of the resultant echo signal. The proposed method does not modify the phase relations between echoes from multiple scatterers since the restoration filter is phaseless and the display operation does not involve nonlinear detection. The effectiveness of the restoration filter was tested on simulated ultrasonic images in the absence and in the presence of interposed tissue. Then the filter was tested on a phantom made of scatterers randomly distributed in nonattenuating gel with and without an interposed medium whose attenuation linearly increases with frequency. A good correspondence between simulations and experimental results was found: both tests show an exceptional improvement of image resolution. <<ETX>>
Using annotations to model discourse: an extension to the Annotation Ontology

The Annotation Ontology (AO) has proven to be a valuable resource for structuring annotations in scientific documents. We are representing elements of discourse with the AO; by using our proposed extension it is possible to mark up specific rhetorical structures and build a network of interconnected documents. The extension presented in this paper also makes it possible to represent more expressive associations across nanopublications.
Recomended for You: The Impact of Profit Incentives on the Relevance of Online Recommendations

Je vous le recommande : impact de l'intéressement aux bénéfices sur la pertinence des recommandations en ligne Abstract Recommender systems are commonly used by Internet firms to improve consumers' shopping experience and increase firm sales and profits. A large stream of work on recommender design has studied the problem of identifying the most relevant items to recommend to users. In parallel, recent empirical work has started to provide evidence that real-world recommenders contribute to increased sales and profitability for the firms. However, maximizing consumer welfare and firm profit are not the same. Given that recommenders impact sales and profits, a natural question is what is the impact of firm's profit incentives on recommender design? This paper studies optimal recommender design in a profit-maximizing framework to answer the question and identifies the conditions under which a profit-maximizing recommender recommends the item with highest margins and those under which it recommends the most relevant item. We further elaborate on the social cost of the mismatch between consumer and firm incentives. Résumé Les systèmes de recommandation en ligne sont communément employés par les entreprises pour accroître leurs ventes et leurs bénéfices. Ce papier étudie l'impact de l'intéressement aux bénéfices sur l'élaboration des recommandations et identifie sous quelles conditions un conseiller recommande le produit avec les plus fortes marges et celles où le conseiller recommande le produit le plus pertinent. Nous estimons ensuite le coût social d'inadéquation entre le consommateur et l'intéressement.
On the Robustness of LDP Protocols for Numerical Attributes under Data Poisoning Attacks

Recent studies reveal that local differential privacy (LDP) protocols are vulnerable to data poisoning attacks where an attacker can manipulate the final estimate on the server by leveraging the characteristics of LDP and sending carefully crafted data from a small fraction of controlled local clients. This vulnerability raises concerns regarding the robustness and reliability of LDP in hostile environments. In this paper, we conduct a systematic investigation of the robustness of state-of-the-art LDP protocols for numerical attributes, i.e., categorical frequency oracles (CFOs) with binning and consistency, and distribution reconstruction. We evaluate protocol robustness through an attack-driven approach and propose new metrics for cross-protocol attack gain measurement. The results indicate that Square Wave and CFO-based protocols in the Server setting are more robust against the attack compared to the CFO-based protocols in the User setting. Our evaluation also unfolds new relationships between LDP security and its inherent design choices. We found that the hash domain size in local-hashing-based LDP has a profound impact on protocol robustness beyond the well-known effect on utility. Further, we propose a zero-shot attack detection by leveraging the rich reconstructed distribution information. The experiment show that our detection significantly improves the existing methods and effectively identifies data manipulation in challenging scenarios.
Dataverse: Open-Source ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) Pipeline for Large Language Models

To address the challenges associated with data processing at scale, we propose Dataverse, a unified open-source Extract-Transform-Load (ETL) pipeline for large language models (LLMs) with a user-friendly design at its core. Easy addition of custom processors with block-based interface in Dataverse allows users to readily and efficiently use Dataverse to build their own ETL pipeline. We hope that Dataverse will serve as a vital tool for LLM development and open source the entire library to welcome community contribution. Additionally, we provide a concise, two-minute video demonstration of our system, illustrating its capabilities and implementation.
Language and Ethnic Boundaries: Perceptions of Identity Expressed through Attitudes towards the Use of Language Education in Southern Ethiopia

The field research that provides the material for this paper concerned the introduction of local languages into the primary education system in the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples Regional State (SNNPRS) of Ethiopia, and the reactions of local people to this change in government language policy. Previously, Amharic was the only language used in primary schools throughout Ethiopia. Local languages have now been introduced as media of instruction (the language in which subjects are taught) in many areas of Ethiopia, in response to the present government’s broadly conceived programs for political and cultural reform intended to “create equality” for Ethiopia’s many ethnic or linguistic groups, at least in proportion to the sizes of their respective populations. Article 39.2 of the new Ethiopian Constitution of 1995 asserts the linguistic rights of groups of people in the Ethiopian state as follows:
The Validity of a Battery of Creativity Tests in a High School Sample

a battery of &dquo;creativity&dquo; tests. A second purpose was to determine the degree to which the criterion variance accounted for by the creativity tests is independent of the criterion variance accounted for by an IQ test. Sample. The sample consisted of 161 students (95 males and 66 females) in a suburban Salt Lake City, Utah high school. These students were selected on the basis of having taken at least two high school science courses, and were in their senior year when the battery of creativity tests was administered. In the data analysis, the two sexes were treated separately. Predictor Variables. For each student in the sample an IQ based