Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Tissue Inhibitor of Metalloproteinase-4 Triggers Apoptosis in Cervical Cancer Cells

Tissue inhibitor of metalloproteinase-4 (TIMP-4) is a member of extracellular matrix (ECM) metalloproteinases inhibitors that has pleiotropic functions. However, TIMP-4 roles in carcinogenesis are not well understood. Cell viability and flow cytometer assays were employed to evaluate cell death differences between H-Vector and H-TIMP-4 cell lines. Immunobloting and semi-quantitative RT-PCR were used to evaluate the expression of apoptosis regulators. We showed that TIMP-4 has apoptosis-sensitizing effects towards several death stimuli. Consistent with these findings, regulators of apoptosis from Inhibitors of Apoptosis Proteins (IAP), FLICE-like inhibitor proteins (FLIP) and Bcl-2 family members were modulated by TIMP-4. In addition, TIMP-4 knockdown resulted in cell survival increase after serum deprivation, as assessed by clonogenic cell analyses. This report shows that TIMP-4 regulates carcinogenesis through apoptosis activation in cervical cancer cells. Understanding TIMP-4 effects in tumorigenesis may provide clues for future therapies.
On the risk-adjusted pricing-methodology-based valuation of vanilla options and explanation of the volatility smile

We analyse a model for pricing derivative securities in the presence of both transaction costs as well as the risk from a volatile portfolio. The model is based on the Black-Scholes parabolic PDE in which transaction costs are described following the Hoggard, Whalley, and Wilmott approach. The risk from a volatile portfolio is described by the variance of the synthesized portfolio. Transaction costs as well as the volatile portfolio risk depend on the time lag between two consecutive transactions. Minimizing their sum yields the optimal length of the hedge interval. In this model, prices of vanilla options can be computed from a solution to a fully nonlinear parabolic equation in which a diffusion coefficient representing volatility nonlinearly depends on the solution itself giving rise to explaining the volatility smile analytically. We derive a robust numerical scheme for solving the governing equation and perform extensive numerical testing of the model and compare the results to real option market data. Implied risk and volatility are introduced and computed for large option datasets. We discuss how they can be used in qualitative and quantitative analysis of option market data.
Compensating Gender Variability in Query-by-Example Search on Speech Using Voice Conversion

The huge amount of available spoken documents has raised the need for tools to perform automatic searches within large audio databases. These collections usually consist of documents with a great variability regarding speaker, language or recording channel, among others. Reducing this variability would boost the performance of query-by-example search on speech systems, especially in zero-resource systems that use acoustic features for audio representation. Hence, in this work, a technique to compensate the variability caused by speaker gender is proposed. Given a data collection composed of documents spoken by both male and female voices, every time a spoken query has to be searched, an alternative version of the query on its opposite gender is generated using voice conversion. After that, the female version of the query is used to search within documents spoken by females and vice versa. Experimental validation of the proposed strategy shows an improvement of search on speech performance caused by the reduction of gender variability.
Extended indications for robotic surgery for posterior mediastinal tumors

Previously, we evaluated use of the da Vinci Surgical System for anterior and middle mediastinal tumors in clinical cases, focusing on feasibility, safety, and appropriate settings. In this study, we evaluated extending the indications for robotic surgical treatment of posterior mediastinal tumors to include those located adjacent to the upper vertebrae or aorta. Three patients with mediastinal tumors located immediately adjacent to the vertebrae or aorta, underwent resection with the da Vinci Surgical System. All resected tumors were benign histologically. Robotic surgery enabled treatment of tumors located in the posterior mediastinum, which are very difficult to reach, making resection with the conventional video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery technique extremely difficult. All procedures were performed safely, smoothly, and extremely precisely. Crucial to the success of these operations were the appropriate placement and angle of the special da Vinci surgical ports in relation to the target and the patient’s position, which varied according to the tumor location.
Pricing of Advertisements on the Internet

Online advertisements are increasingly becoming an attractive channel for advertising. Pricing for online ads has evolved over time, and different auction-based policies are employed by website publishers to sell online ads. In this paper, we analyze, under different scenarios, the following three auction-based policies commonly used by the publishers: (i) invite bids for an impression of an ad, display the highest bidder’s ad, and charge the winning advertiser the submitted bid (ii) invite bids for a click of an ad, display the ad of the bidder submitting the highest bid for a click, and charge the winner the bid submitted, and (iii) invite bids for a click of an ad, use the bid and the click-through-rate of the ad to compute the expected publisher profit from the ad, display the ad generating the highest profit, and charge the winner the submitted bid. A distinguishing feature of our analysis is that it considers the effect of product-market positioning of sellers on their bids for online ads and the consequent implications for pricing policies. Our analysis provides a number of insights useful to the website publisher and the advertisers. First, interestingly, we find that the bid per impression policy and the bid per click policy that uses the expected profit to determine the winner generate identical outcomes. Second, the advertiser profits are found to be higher when the publisher is capable of targeting the consumers. From the first two results, it appears that advertisers’ angst at pricing based on impressions may be misplaced, and that a more critical determinant of the advertiser’s profitability is the publisher’s ability to target. Third, we find the surprising result that among the two bid per click policies, the one that uses the expected publisher profit can generate lower publisher profits. Fourth, we show that, similar to that in the literature on maximizing channel profits in the traditional markets, non-linear pricing of ads leads the publisher to gain the maximum profits even in this vastly different advertising distribution channel. Fifth, we demonstrate that offline ads and online ads are synergistic.
How ideas flow across multiple social groups

Tracking how correlated ideas flow within and across multiple social groups facilitates the understanding of the transfer of information, opinions, and thoughts on social media. In this paper, we present IdeaFlow, a visual analytics system for analyzing the lead-lag changes within and across pre-defined social groups regarding a specific set of correlated ideas, each of which is described by a set of words. To model idea flows accurately, we develop a random-walk-based correlation model and integrate it with Bayesian conditional cointegration and a tensor-based technique. To convey complex lead-lag relationships over time, IdeaFlow combines the strengths of a bubble tree, a flow map, and a timeline. In particular, we develop a Voronoi-treemap-based bubble tree to help users get an overview of a set of ideas quickly. A correlated-clustering-based layout algorithm is used to simultaneously generate multiple flow maps with less ambiguity. We also introduce a focus+context timeline to explore huge amounts of temporal data at different levels of time granularity. Quantitative evaluation and case studies demonstrate the accuracy and effectiveness of IdeaFlow.
A psychometric evaluation of the Beck Depression inventory-II

This article provides psychometric information on the second edition of the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI-II; A. T. Beck, R. A. Steer, & G. K. Brown, 1996), with respect to internal consistency, factorial validity, and gender differences. Both measures demonstrated high internal reliability in the full student sample. Significant differences between the mean BDI and BDI-II scores necessitated the development of new cutoffs for analogue research on the BDI-II. Results from exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses indicated that a 2-factor solution optimally summarized the data for both versions of the inventory and accounted for a cumulative 41% and 46% of the common variance in BDI and BDI-II responses, respectively. These factor solutions were reliably cross-validated, although the importance of each factor varied by gender. The authors conclude that the BDI-II is a stronger instrument than the BDI in terms of its factor structure.
Effects of mergers and acquisitions on the economy: an industrial organization perspective

Once upon a time, study of the effects of mergers was clearly the province of specialists in industrial organization. But then, following two upheavals, this turf was lost. The first change was the shift (in the United States; less in other industrial countries) toward diversifying mergers and away from those combining competing or vertically related companies. The second change was the development of "event studies": the method of inferring the profitability of mergers ex ante from changes in stock-market values at the time when the transaction is announced. The first change removed the bulk of acquisitions from categories for which microeconomic theory possesses strong models. We have lacked equally strong theories to explain the causes and the consequences of diversification. Some models can explain why diversifying mergers might improve the efficiency of resource use, while others show that they might facilitate collusive or rent-seeking behavior. But the yea-saying models have not attracted much interest except in business administration; and the nay-saying models, resting on stringent assumptions and hard to test empirically, have made only a modest impression. The second change allowed the study of mergers to be annexed in a bloodless coup by the finance specialists. "Event studies" seem to have everything going for them. They focus directly on the primary question of whether mergers improve the use of scarce resources. 1 They avoid the vexing controlled-experiment problems that plague any attempt to infer the consequences of mergers from ex post data. And their authors possess deadly weapons for repelling skeptics who fear slippage between
Caring for Sharing How Attachment Styles Modulate Communal Cues of Physical Warmth

Does physical warmth lead to caring and sharing? Research suggests that it does; physically warm versus cold conditions induce prosocial behaviors and cognitions. Importantly, previous research has not traced the developmental origins of the association between physical warmth and affection. The association between physical warmth and sharing may be captured in specific cognitive models of close social relations, often referred to as attachment styles. In line with this notion, and using a dictator game set-up, the current study demonstrates that children who relate to their friends with a secure attachment style are more generous toward their peers in warm than in cold conditions. This effect was absent for children who relate to friends with an insecure attachment style. Notably, however, these children not just always shared less: They allocated more stickers to a friend than to a stranger. These findings provide an important first step to understand how fundamental embodied relations develop early in life. We discuss broader implications for grounded cognition and person perception.
Over 50 Years of Dedication to Hawai ‘ i ’ s Physicians

Takayasu’s arteritis is a large vessel vasculitis that can be a challenging diagnosis to make and has a varied clinical presentation. Management largely depends on affected vessel disease severity and individual patient considerations. The diagnosis must be considered in a young patient with large vessel aneurysms. We present a case of a 30 year-old woman of Pacific Islander descent who presented to the Tripler Army medical Center Vascular Surgery Department in Honolulu, Hawai‘i seeking repair of her abdominal aortic and renal artery aneurysms prior to conception. A 30 year-old Pacific Islander woman with a history of a saccular abdominal aortic aneurysm and renal artery aneurysms presented to our clinic seeking vascular surgery consultation prior to a planned pregnancy. She had a renal artery stent placed at an outside institution for hypertension. She met the diagnosis of Takayasu’s arteritis by Sharma’s criteria. Physical exam was significant for a palpable, pulsatile, abdominal mass and CT angiography revealed a saccular irregular-appearing infra-renal abdominal aortic aneurysm, extending to the aortic bifurcation, with a maximum diameter of 3.3 cm. A right renal artery aneurysm was also identified proximally, contiguous with the aorta, with a maximal transverse diameter of 1.7 cm. The patient underwent a supraceliac bypass to the right renal artery with a 7mm Dacron graft, as well as excision of the right renal artery aneurysm. The abdominal aortic aneurysm was replaced using a Hemashield Dacron bifurcated 14mm x 7mm bypass graft. Intraoperative measurements of the renal artery aneurysm were 1.5 x 1.5 cm and the saccular appearing distal abdominal aortic aneurysm measured 3.6 x 3.3cm. The patient was discharged from the hospital 7 days post-operatively. At 1-year follow up, CT scan of the abdominal aorta revealed the repair was without any evidence of aneurysm formation, anastomotic pseudoaneurysm formation, or areas of stenosis. She has remained normotensive with a normal serum creatinine 18 months after her repair. She has since delivered her second child. It is rare for Takayasu’s arteritis to present with aneurysmal disease. It is much more common to present with stenosis or occlusion. It has yet to be proven that Takayasu’s truly has a higher incidence in those of Asian descent. Takayasu’s can be a difficult diagnosis to make but can be aided with the use of Sharma’s criteria. Our particular patient posed unique considerations on the effects of the physiology of pregnancy on her aneurysms and repair. Managing the active phases of disease is imperative, and though medical management is first line, surgical intervention may be necessary. Surgical intervention should be performed in a quiescent period of disease if possible given that biological inflammation at the time of intervention increases the complication rate. Repair of aneurysmal disease in a young female should also be considered prior to pregnancy.
The MGB-2 challenge: Arabic multi-dialect broadcast media recognition

This paper describes the Arabic Multi-Genre Broadcast (MGB-2) Challenge for SLT-2016. Unlike last year's English MGB Challenge, which focused on recognition of diverse TV genres, this year, the challenge has an emphasis on handling the diversity in dialect in Arabic speech. Audio data comes from 19 distinct programmes from the Aljazeera Arabic TV channel between March 2005 and December 2015. Programmes are split into three groups: conversations, interviews, and reports. A total of 1,200 hours have been released with lightly supervised transcriptions for the acoustic modelling. For language modelling, we made available over 110M words crawled from Aljazeera Arabic website Aljazeera.net for a 10 year duration 2000−2011. Two lexicons have been provided, one phoneme based and one grapheme based. Finally, two tasks were proposed for this year's challenge: standard speech transcription, and word alignment. This paper describes the task data and evaluation process used in the MGB challenge, and summarises the results obtained.
Platelets in cancer

Summary Platelets are well-known for their major role in primary hemostasis and thrombosis. Cancer patients frequently manifest thrombotic events and present abnormalities in blood coagulation which appear to be linked to altered platelet function and turnover. Moreover, numerous studies indicate an intimate cross-talk between platelets and tumor growth, angiogenesis and metastatic dissemination. Finally, several experimental data and clinical trials suggest possible benefits of anti-platelet drugs on some cancers. Here, we will review the current state of basic biological research regarding the role of platelets in cancer progression. We also critically review the possible clinical applicability of some anti-platelet therapies to limit tumor growth and prevent metastatic dissemination.
Still Living, Loving, and Laughing: Spiritual Life in the Dementia Unit

Semi-structured interviews, conducted with dementia unit residents, family, and staff members provided a three-way perspective on the spirituality of residents. The issues covered included: what gives meaning to life, how difficulties are coped with and hope maintained. Themes identified were: “the importance of relationships,” “the retention of identity,” and “the progression of dementia. ” These themes are interdependent with relationships being important both in giving meaning in themselves and in assisting with the maintenance of identity, especially as cognitive function deteriorated. An identifiable and relating person remains despite dementia. Provided appropriate assistance, the person with advanced dementia is able to value and engage in spiritual practices that provide ongoing meaning at times of great uncertainty and difficulty.
Pre-Equalization and Precoding Design for Frequency-Selective Fading Channels

In this paper, we consider the joint transmitter and receiver design problem based on a novel approximate maximum likelihood decision feedback equalizer (A-ML-DFE) over frequency-selective, time- invariant fading channels. By applying decision feedback equalization, Gaussian approximation, a pre-whitening filter, and a matched filter, the proposed A-ML-DFE can realize single symbol detection. The proposed scheme achieves near-optimal performance with a complexity lower than the linear MMSE and the MMSE-DFE. By assuming full channel knowledge, we perform pre-equalization and precoding in a downlink scenario at the transmitter side. The pre-equalizer can achieve perfect decision feedback and thus, provide better performance at low signal- to-noise ratio (SNR) with a reduced receiver complexity. The precoder designed to minimize the analytical symbol error rate (SER) of this system can further improve the performance.
Deep Convolutional Neural Networks for Pairwise Causality

Discovering causal models from observational and interventional data is an important first step preceding what-if analysis or counterfactual reasoning. As has been shown before, the direction of pairwise causal relations can, under certain conditions, be inferred from observational data via standard gradient-boosted classifiers (GBC) using carefully engineered statistical features. In this paper we apply deep convolutional neural networks (CNNs) to this problem by plotting attribute pairs as 2-D scatter plots that are fed to the CNN as images. We evaluate our approach on the 'Cause- Effect Pairs' NIPS 2013 Data Challenge. We observe that a weighted ensemble of CNN with the earlier GBC approach yields significant improvement. Further, we observe that when less training data is available, our approach performs better than the GBC based approach suggesting that CNN models pre-trained to determine the direction of pairwise causal direction could have wider applicability in causal discovery and enabling what-if or counterfactual analysis.
Load current based analog MPPT controller for PV solar systems

Analog maximum power point tracking (MPPT) controller circuit for photovoltaic solar panels/cells is an attractive solution due to its low cost and simple implementation. The paper presents an analog Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT) controller for a Photovoltaic (PV) solar system that utilizes the load current to achieve maximum output power from the solar panel. Compared to the existing MPPT controller circuitry which requires multiplication of the sensed PV panel voltage and current to yield panel power, the cost and size of the proposed circuit are reduced. The tracking performance of the proposed MPPT controller is validated by simulation results. The proposed MPPT controller circuit can be further implemented by CMOS technology and fabricated on-chip to perform distributed maximum power point tracking (DMPPT) in PV system.
Social inequalities in road traffic deaths at age 16–20 years among all 611 654 Norwegians born between 1967 and 1976: a multilevel analysis

Background Road traffic injury is a major cause of death among youths. Aims To estimate mortality differences in family socioeconomic position (SEP) and municipal disadvantage level. Methods Data on all Norwegians born in 1967–76, gathered from national registries, were linked by a unique national identification number. The 611 654 participants were followed-up for 5 years from age 16 years. Parental education level, father's income level, and proportion of high-income earners in the municipality served as SEP indicators. Associations between SEP and road traffic deaths were analysed by multilevel Poisson regression. Results Road traffic deaths (n=676, rate 22.2 per 100 000 person-years) constituted a major cause of death, of which 91.9% were motor vehicle occupants. SEP distributions differed according to gender and type of motor vehicle crash (collision, non-collision). There was an inverse relationship between municipal proportions of high-income earners and mortality (population attributable fraction (PAF) 0.43, 95% CI 0.30 to 0.53) in all categories of gender-specific crash types. Family SEP gradients were not found except for male non-collision deaths, where increasing mortality was found in association with decreasing parental education level (PAF 0.94, 95% CI 0.59 to 0.99) and increasing paternal income (PAF 0.25, 95% CI 0.06 to 0.40). Conclusion The different SEP patterns for road traffic deaths across gender and motor vehicle crash type illustrate that heterogeneity of social inequalities in health can be found even within narrow age bands and for similar causes of death.