Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Stem cell factor‐activated bone marrow ameliorates amyotrophic lateral sclerosis by promoting protective microglial migration

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a progressive disease associated with motor neuron death. Several experimental treatments, including cell therapy using hematopoietic or neuronal stem cells, have been tested in ALS animal models, but therapeutic benefits have been modest. Here we used a new therapeutic strategy, bone marrow transplantation (BMT) with stem cell factor (SCF)‐ or FMS‐like tyrosine kinase 3 (flt3)‐activated bone marrow (BM) cells for the treatment of hSOD1(G93A) transgenic mice. Motor function and survival showed greater improvement in the SCF group than in the group receiving BM cells that had not been activated (BMT alone group), although no improvement was shown in the flt3 group. In addition, larger numbers of BM‐derived cells that expressed the microglia marker Iba1 migrated to the spinal cords of recipient mice compared with the BMT‐alone group. Moreover, after SCF activation, but not flt3 activation or no activation, the migrating microglia expressed glutamate transporter‐1 (GLT‐1). In spinal cords in the SCF group, inflammatory cytokines tumor necrosis factor‐α and interleukin‐1β were suppressed and the neuroprotective molecule insulin‐like growth factor‐1 increased relative to nontreatment hSOD1(G93A) transgenic mice. Therefore, SCF activation changed the character of the migrating donor BM cells, which resulted in neuroprotective effects. These studies have identified SCF‐activated BM cells as a potential new therapeutic agent for the treatment of ALS. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Can Reinvestment Risk Explain the Dividend and Bond Term Structures

Contradicting leading asset pricing models, recent evidence indicates the term structure of dividend discount rates is downward sloping despite the typical upward sloping bond yield curve. This paper empirically shows that reinvestment risk explains both the dividend and bond term structures. Intuitively, dividend claims hedge equity reinvestment risk because dividend present values rise as expected returns decline. This hedge is more effective for longer-term dividend claims because they are more sensitive to discount rate variation, resulting in a downward sloping dividend term structure. For bonds, as expected equity returns decline, nominal interest rates rise, and bond prices fall. Consequently, bonds are exposed to equity reinvestment risk, and this exposure increases with duration, giving rise to an upward sloping bond term structure.
Body size and composition and the risk of gastric and oesophageal adenocarcinoma

Although evidence has been mounting that obesity may be related to the increased incidence of oesophageal and gastric cardia malignancies, these reports (mainly case‐control studies) have relied on imperfect measures of obesity such as body mass index (BMI), and generally have not clearly distinguished between anatomical subsites within the oesophagus and stomach. In a prospective study of people aged 27–75 years, we directly measured fat mass and fat‐free mass (using bioelectrical impedance analysis), height, weight and waist and hip circumferences. Among 41,295 people followed on average for 11.3 years, 30 cases with cancers in the gastric cardia or lower third of the oesophagus and 68 cases with noncardia gastric adenocarcinomas were ascertained via the population cancer registry. The risk of adenocarcinoma of the lower oesophagus and gastric cardia was positively associated with BMI with a hazards ratio (HR) and (95% confidence interval) for people with BMI ≥ 30 kg/m2 compared with those <25 kg/m2, of 3.7 (1.1–12.4), an HR per 10 cm increase in waist circumference of 1.46 (1.05–2.04), and a HR per 10 kg increase on fat‐free mass of 2.06 (1.15–3.69). Noncardia gastric adenocarcinoma showed little relationship with body size. We observed an increased risk of adenocarcinoma of the lower oesophagus and gastric cardia associated with increased BMI, central adiposity and the nonfat component of weight, but found no association with noncardia gastric adenocarcinoma. An increasing prevalence of obesity may be associated with the increasing incidence of gastro‐oesophageal cancer observed in many populations. © 2005 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
A 1∶1 prototype of power generation system based upon cross-flow water turbines

This paper deals with the conception and building of an electrical power generation prototype based upon the cross-flow water turbines. The structure has been tested in grid-connected conditions in order to identify the hydrodynamic characteristics of the prime mover and to evaluate the energy efficiency of the overall energy conversion chain. The real-world tests confirm the preliminary conclusion issued from simulations and assessments previously performed.
Thyroid Hormone Receptors Bind to an Element in the Connexin43 Promoter

Abstract Thyroid hormones stimulate gap junctional communication in rat liver WB-F344 epithelial cells, elevating connexin43 mRNA and protein levels. In the present work we analysed connexin43 expression in liver and heart samples from thyroid hormone-treated Wistar rats. Connexin43 mRNA was elevated 2.1-fold in rat liver samples as compared to controls, while there was no change in heart. Thyroid hormone response elements in the rat connexin43 promoter region were examined; a candidate sequence, including a binding site for ligand-dependent transcription factors, was identified at position −480 to −464. This putative regulatory element, rCx−480, contains a direct repeat structure separated by three base pairs (DR3-type element). In electrophoretic mobility shift assays using in vitro translated proteins, the rCx−480 element formed stronger complexes with thyroid hormone receptor α/retinoid X receptor α heterodimers than with vitamin D receptor/retinoid X receptor α heterodimers. In transfected Cos-7 cells, promoter activation was observed via this element after treatment with 3,3′,5-triiodo-L-thyronine. Loss of binding was seen when the 3′ half-site or the spacer region of the rCx−480 element were experimentally mutated, while a stronger binding was observed with mutations introduced in the 5′ halfsite.
Suppression of Tetradecanoyl Phorbol Acetate-Induced Lytic Reactivation of Kaposi's Sarcoma-Associated Herpesvirus by K1 Signal Transduction

ABSTRACT The K1 protein of Kaposi's sarcoma-associated herpesvirus (KSHV) contains an immunoreceptor tyrosine-based activation motif (ITAM) in its cytoplasmic region and elicits cellular signal transduction through this motif. To investigate the role of K1 signal transduction in KSHV replication, we expressed full-length K1 and CD8-K1 chimeras in BCBL1 cells. Unlike its strong signaling activity in uninfected B lymphocytes, K1 did not induce intracellular calcium mobilization or NF-AT activation at detectable levels in KSHV-infected BCBL1 cells. Instead, K1 signaling dramatically suppressed KSHV lytic reactivation induced by tetradecanoyl phorbol acetate (TPA) stimulation, but not by ORF50 ectopic expression. Mutational analysis showed that the cytoplasmic ITAM sequence of K1 was required for this suppression. Viral microarray and immunoblot analyses demonstrated that K1 signaling suppressed the TPA-mediated increase in the expression of a large subset of viral lytic genes in KSHV-infected BCBL1 cells. Furthermore, electrophoretic mobility shift assays demonstrated that TPA-induced activation of AP-1, NF-κB, and Oct-1 activities was severely diminished in BCBL1 cells expressing the K1 cytoplasmic domain. The reduced activities of these transcription factors may confer the observed reduction in viral lytic gene expression. These results demonstrate that K1-mediated signal transduction in KSHV-infected cells is profoundly different from that in KSHV-negative cells. Furthermore, K1 signal transduction efficiently suppresses TPA-mediated viral reactivation in an ITAM-dependent manner, and this suppression may contribute to the establishment and/or maintenance of KSHV latency in vivo.
Spectral-Spatial Feature Extraction and Classification by ANN Supervised With Center Loss in Hyperspectral Imagery

In this paper, we propose a spectral-spatial feature extraction and classification framework based on an artificial neuron network in the context of hyperspectral imagery. With limited labeled samples, only spectral information is exploited for training and spatial context is integrated posteriorly at the testing stage. Taking advantage of recent advances in face recognition, a joint supervision symbol that combines softmax loss and center loss is adopted to train the proposed network, by which intraclass features are gathered while interclass variations are enlarged. Based on the learned architecture, the extracted spectrum-based features are classified by a center classifier. Moreover, to fuse the spectral and spatial information, an adaptive spectral-spatial center classifier is developed, where multiscale neighborhoods are considered simultaneously, and the final label is determined using an adaptive voting strategy. Finally, experimental results on three well-known data sets validate the effectiveness of the proposed methods compared with the state-of-the-art approaches.
Social Responsibility at Universities

Despite the fact that there has been an increase in the number of reports related to Social Responsibility practices published by universities, the content of these reports is unbalanced and heterogeneous. Social Responsibility reports have a problem with the evaluation and comparison of the university’s results achieved in this area. The main goal of this paper is to analyze different universities’ reports in order to obtain the information necessary to identify to which extent these reports are comparable to each other. A content analysis has been carried out by analyzing six different Catalan universities as a case study. Findings show that there are important differences in the structure and the content of these reports. With this information a basic guideline for the structure of these reports is proposed with the aim of improving the capacity to compare these documents and thus, the social responsibility of universities. The results of this study can be used as a tool to attract both students and investors to these universities.
NKp46 defines a subset of bovine leukocytes with natural killer cell characteristics

Natural killer (NK) cells have not previously been precisely identified or characterized in cattle or any other ruminant species. We have generated a monoclonal antibody against bovine NKp46, which is expressed exclusively by NK cells in man. NKp46+ cells comprised 1–10% of blood mononuclear cells in cattle, and did not stain with antibodies against CD3, CD4, TCR1, B cell or granulocyte markers. The majority of the NKp46+ cells expressed CD2, and a variable fraction also expressed CD8. The tissue distribution of NKp46+ cells in cattle was compatible with the tissue distribution of NK cells in other species. Bovine NKp46+ cells had typical, large granular lymphocyte morphology, and proliferated vigorously in response to bovine IL‐2 for a limited number of cell divisions. IL‐2‐activated NKp46+ cells killed the bovine kidney cell line MDBK. This cytotoxicity was inhibited by preincubation with antibody against NKp46. In a redirected lysis assay, IL‐2‐activated NKp46+ cells killed the FcγR+ target cell line P815 after preincubation with antibody against NKp46. Together, these data indicate that bovine NKp46 is anactivating receptor and demonstrate the existence of a subset of leukocytes in cattle that, in terms of surface markers, morphology and function, represent NK cells.
Are students' world views permeable to their school views in a non-Western developing country?

The purpose of this study was to examine in a developing country context the extent to which students and parents perceive the school view as being relevant to their traditional lifestyle or world view. The study builds on past cross-cultural research by examining the permeability of non-Western students' world view to the official Western school view. This ethnographic study involved interview and case study techniques with six village elders and 15 high school siblings in a South Pacific country. The results suggest strongly that the process of schooling involves an implicit devaluation of students' traditional world views which govern their village lifestyles. This study is important in that it shows that their school views are not largely taking precedence over their world views. The process of formal education is not perceived as improving the knowledge and skills needed for the survival in the village context and is perceived to be of limited viability in relation to traditional values. The main perceived benefit of formal education for students is its improvement of their prospects of earning a monetary income that could be shared with their extended families if they obtain employment in a town.
Developing a genetically informative measure of alcohol consumption using past-12-month indices.

OBJECTIVE The goal of this study was to develop a factor score derived from measures of past-12-month alcohol consumption. METHOD Data were drawn from two studies-the Adult and Family Development Project (N = 734) and the Missouri Adolescent Female Twin Study (N = 3,787). Data on four indices of alcohol consumption (quantity, frequency, frequency of drinking to intoxication, and frequency of five or more drinks/day) were factor analyzed, and differences in factor loadings across gender, race/ethnicity, and study were tested. Correlations between these factors were computed across three assessments and between parent and offspring self-reports. Finally, using the classical twin design, variance in the past-12-month alcohol consumption factor was decomposed into additive genetic (A), shared environmental (C), and nonshared environmental (E) influences, and the extent to which these factors overlap with those influencing lifetime heaviest drinking were examined. RESULTS Factor loadings across all groups were high (.69-.95), with some evidence for differing factor loadings across gender, race/ethnicity, and study. The across-wave correlations for the factor ranged from . 22 to . 62. The within-wave correlation between parental and offspring drinking was . 25, suggesting the importance of familial influences, which genetic analyses attributed to both additive genetic (31%) and shared environmental (17%) factors. The overlap between genetic influences on past-12-month and lifetime heaviest drinking was 0.97. CONCLUSIONS A factor score derived from past-12-month drinking measures is heritable and is largely influenced by those genetic factors that influence heaviest drinking, at least in young adults. It also shows moderate across-wave stability. This will allow for large- and small-scale genomic studies to use past-12-month drinking measures in data analysis of similar cohorts.
Category Classification of Text Data with Machine Learning Technique for Visualizing Flow of Conversation in Counseling

The beginner counselors have more likely to continue counseling in their own interest, they have a high tendency to make great use of the closed-ended question in order to confirm the interpretation with the client. While expert counselors are instructing the counseling skill to beginner counselors, we consider that the reaction of a client for a beginner counselor's question is important to visualize in an appropriate method. To respond the request, we have developed a system for visualizing the flow of conversation in counseling. However, the expert counselor as the system user requires to correct the initial classification result manually, and the work burden is large, because the accuracy of the category classification of conversation data is very low in the current system. To improve this problem, we have implemented on the category classification method of text data with SVM (Support Vector Machine) as machine learning technique to visualize the flow of conversation in counseling. In addition, we have compared and evaluated with results of the initial classification method of the current system. As these results, we have shown that the accuracy rate of the classification method with SVM become higher than the results in the current system.
Measuring Trust: A Reinvestigation

We reinvestigate the question first posed by Glaeser, Laibson, Scheinkman and Soutter (2000, GLSS hereafter): What is the best measure of trust for predicting trusting behavior? This important study, cited over 2,100 times, established that the behavior in the investment game, an incentivized measure of trust, is not correlated with the responses to the most widely used survey questions about trust, employed in the General Social Survey (GSS) and the World Values Survey (WVS). We use the GLSS protocol with one major change: we employ the original Berg et al. (1995) investment game instead of the modified version used in GLSS. The standard game endows both players, while the latter endows only the first mover, potentially changing the incentives that influence subjects’ behavior. In particular, the utility from trusting behavior for inequality averse individuals may be higher, if the second movers are not endowed. Thus, such players may appear to be more trusting even though they are simply inequality averse. This causes a distortion in the laboratory measure of trust and reduces its correlation with the survey measure of trust. In support of this concern, GLSS demonstrates that the survey measure of trust is not correlated with trusting behavior in their investment game, where the second mover is not endowed. After endowing the second mover, we find the opposite. Our finding suggests that trust is a single construct, whether measured by the survey questions or by an incentivized game. This can be masked if the incentivized measure of trust is confounded with other motives.
Improved signal estimation based on combined forward and backward lattice reduction in MIMO systems

Lattice reduction aided (LRA) detection with the LLL algorithm has been investigated to achieve the MIMO channel capacity with low computational complexity. This paper proposes an improved LRA-MMSE detection using the forward and the backward reduction LLL algorithms for the 8times8 MIMO to obtain more reliable estimates of the transmitted signals. The proposed method achieved much better BERs than the conventional LRA detection. The transmit signal energy could be saved about 3.5 dB at BER=10-5, and the BER slope became much steeper, which is almost the same as that with the maximum likelihood detection.
Liquid culture production of chlamydospores of Lewia chlamidosporiformans (Ascomycota: Pleosporales), a mycoherbicide candidate for wild poinsettia

Lewia chlamidosporiformans (Ascomycota) is a recently described fungal species that is a highly virulent pathogen of wild poinsettia (Euphorbia heterophylla — Euphorbiaceae), one of the worst weeds in Brazilian agriculture and an aggressive invader of soybean fields. A mycoherbicide against this weed is presently being developed with L. chlamidosporiformans. Methods for production of chlamydospores, the asexual resting spores of L. chlamidosporiformans, which are seemingly ideal active ingredients for a mycoherbicide, were investigated. Optimal production of chlamydospores was achieved after 6–9 days growth in Jenkins-Prior (JP) liquid culture medium, pH 6.9–7.0, at 25–30°C, at an agitation speed of 150 rpm. Two modifications on the original composition of JP medium aimed at cost reduction in mass production were tested with success (without loss in chlamydospore productivity): the use of brown sugar as a carbon source and a reduction to half of the amount of yeast extract used in the original formula.
Bimolecular fluorescence complementation: lighting up seven transmembrane domain receptor signalling networks

There is increasing complexity in the organization of seven transmembrane domain (7TM) receptor signalling pathways, and in the ability of their ligands to modulate and direct this signalling. Underlying these events is a network of protein interactions between the 7TM receptors themselves and associated effectors, such as G proteins and β‐arrestins. Bimolecular fluorescence complementation, or BiFC, is a technique capable of detecting these protein–protein events essential for 7TM receptor function. Fluorescent proteins, such as those from Aequorea victoria, are split into two non‐fluorescent halves, which then tag the proteins under study. On association, these fragments refold and regenerate a mature fluorescent protein, producing a BiFC signal indicative of complex formation. Here, we review the experimental criteria for successful application of BiFC, considered in the context of 7TM receptor signalling events such as receptor dimerization, G protein and β‐arrestin signalling. The advantages and limitations of BiFC imaging are compared with alternative resonance energy transfer techniques. We show that the essential simplicity of the fluorescent BiFC measurement allows high‐content and advanced imaging applications, and that it can probe more complex multi‐protein interactions alone or in combination with resonance energy transfer. These capabilities suggest that BiFC techniques will become ever more useful in the analysis of ligand and 7TM receptor pharmacology at the molecular level of protein–protein interactions.
N 6-(4-Fluorobenzyl)-3-nitropyridine-2,6-diamine

In the title compound, C12H11FN4O2, the pyridine ring is connected to a benzene ring by a –CH2—NH2- chain. The nitro group is twisted out of the pyridine ring plane [torsion angle O—N—C—C = 10.41 (10)°]. An intramolecular N—H⋯O hydrogen bond occurs. The fluorobenzene ring is disordered over two positions [occupancy ratio = 0.59 (3):0.41 (3)]. Intermolecular N—H⋯O and N—H⋯N hydrogen bonds stabilize the crystal structure.
Bayesians in clinical trials: Asleep at the switch

The refreshing Bayes perspective has much to offer biostatistics. Yet, from its 225‐year‐old roots sprung difficulties that blocked its growth at the beginning of the 20th century. Computational obstacles in concert with an inability to identify the best indifferent prior revealed a weakness on which frequentists capitalized. It took Bayesians 40 years to recover, allowing the infant field of biostatistics to fall firmly in the hands of the frequentists. Recent disillusionment with the frequentist perspective, and its hegemony of p‐values, has produced a second opportunity for the Bayesian philosophy to make solid contributions to clinical trials.
Informative sensor selection and learning for prediction of lower limb kinematics using generative stochastic neural networks

We propose a novel approach of selecting useful input sensors as well as learning a mathematical model for predicting lower limb joint kinematics. We applied a feature selection method based on the mutual information called the variational information maximization, which has been reported as the state-of-the-art work among information based feature selection methods. The main difficulty in applying the method is estimating reliable probability density of input and output data, especially when the data are high dimensional and real-valued. We addressed this problem by applying a generative stochastic neural network called the restricted Boltzmann machine, through which we could perform sampling based probability estimation. The mutual informations between inputs and outputs are evaluated in each backward sensor elimination step, and the least informative sensor is removed with its network connections. The entire network is fine-tuned by maximizing conditional likelihood in each step. Experimental results are shown for 4 healthy subjects walking with various speeds, recording 64 sensor measurements including electromyogram, acceleration, and foot-pressure sensors attached on both lower limbs for predicting hip and knee joint angles. For test set of walking with arbitrary speed, our results show that our suggested method can select informative sensors while maintaining a good prediction accuracy.